Deceptive
by Chemical-Rival
Summary: Some people are best left dead. But they don't always stay that way, do they? (A sequel to Idiosyncrasy)
1. Deadly Creatures

"Hm...I think this one is the right shade."

"I'm pretty sure it's not. Do you not know what color the walls are?"

"Do _you _not know what color the walls are? This is clearly the exact same color! The other one is way off. Way, way off!"

"You know what? You're _completely _right."

"Really?"

"Yes."

Foxy groaned, "I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not!"

Baby chuckled. "Fox, both cans of paint are the same color. It won't matter which one we grab."

Currently, Foxy's place of work was closed, so he and Riley were finally going to take the opportunity to repaint a wall in one of the party rooms. It had been looking pretty bad for quite a while.

"What?!" He brought both cans very close to his face, carefully scanning over the labels. "Crap, you're right."

He picked up a rather large paintbrush and pointed it at his boss, putting on a look of feigned irritation. "I can't believe you let me argue with you for like, five minutes when you _knew _they were the same color."

A smile crossed the redhead's face. "Sorry, it was funny how worked up you were getting over it."

Foxy was a bit taken aback. "Oh my Scott, you're actually smiling!"

"Do I not usually smile?" she asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Not really. At least not like that, you don't."

It was true. Despite being a clown, Riley hardly ever smiled. Her usual facial expression was one of disinterest. Or some slight variation of that.

And on rare occasions where she did smile, the one she usually gave was a sort of lazy, playful, half-smile.

But never a full smile.

Which is why her current facial expression seemed very uncharacteristic.

It almost made her look like a different person entirely.

Foxy had never really noticed how round and cartoonish her eyes actually were since they were almost always half-lidded. They gave her a weird look of innocence and curiosity that didn't match her personality even slightly.

The actual smile itself was stupidly symmetrical and perfect. It looked like something he would see on a doll.

It was very strange.

"Are you okay? Are you sure you're not sick? Or high?"

"Not since I last checked. Just in a good mood, I suppose."

"You're about to repaint a wall and you're in a good mood about it?"

Foxy received an eye roll in response.

"No, Fox. I'm happy because I can be around you all without the feeling of constant paranoia looming over me. I'm happy I'm not...y'know, fucking dead and I actually made it back here in one piece. I am in no way excited to paint the wall. Actually, I'd like to get it over with as soon as possible. So let's get on with it, yeah?"

She started to leave the upstairs storage room, grabbing herself a brush and taking the paint can from Foxy so he didn't have to carry it.

As per usual, she moved faster than necessary and he had to practically jog to keep up with her.

"I find it kinda difficult to imagine you being paranoid. Or scared, for that matter. Seeing visible fear on your face is like...Freddy not pouring milk straight into the box of Nightmare Puffs instead of using a bowl."

"Just because I don't display those emotions doesn't mean I don't feel them. It just means I'm good at masking them with disinterest."

"I wish I could do that. I've screamed so much in the past month that my throat is still sore."

Baby carelessly dropped the can of paint next to the wall that they needed to paint, popping the lid off with a flathead screwdriver. "That better be a joke or I'm gonna go into concerned friend mode and you'll be screwed."

Foxy jokingly raised his hands up in front of himself and backed away a little. "It was, I swear!"

"Good." The lid was discarded onto the tarp they had put down earlier. "Now let's paint this so we can get it over with."

"Yes, sir." He saluted before nearly dropping his entire brush into the paint.

Sure, Foxy may have attempted to make fun of Baby earlier for being excited to paint a wall, but he had to admit that he wasn't having the worst time.

The task itself still wasn't exciting but had missed things being the way they were before Afton had reappeared. The atmosphere was genuinely pleasant. He wasn't afraid to enter the rooms by himself, and he wasn't seeing odd sides of his friends that he never knew existed.

Well, actually, he still felt like he was seeing sides of his friends he wasn't used to. Mostly just with Riley, though. Despite her seemingly unfriendly exterior, she was typically pretty enjoyable to be around. And now it seemed her usual front was slowly but surely fading away, allowing the nice qualities that strangers never really saw in her to better shine through.

It was a little weird, but he wasn't against it.

"Are we done now?"

"No, we still have to do a second coat."

"Can we do that now?"

"Uh, well, this is latex paint so it should take around...four hours to dry. I think."

Foxy groaned louder than necessary, "What are we gonna do for four hours?"

"I don't know." Baby shrugged. "But I'm sure we'll find something."

As if on cue, someone began to sprint down the hallway leading to the party room they both stood in.

There was a flash of purplish-pink and white.

And then, as if capable of leaping inhumanly high, Freddy practically pounced onto Baby.

He landed on her back and she barely managed to keep upright.

Freddy must've eaten his cereal out of an actual bowl in the morning because a look of surprise crossed Baby's face for about a solid two seconds.

"Baby! Th-there's an emergency!"

It took a moment for the redhead to fully regain her composure. "What? What's wrong?"

"I desperately n-need to play Pogs but I can't g-get to them because they're out of m-m-my reach! And Bon-Bon r-refuses to play with me so I kinda need s-someone to do that."

Both Foxy and Baby let out sighs of relief.

"Fred, that is _not _an emergency."

Nearly tearing up, he shouted, "It is t-to me!" and since he was still clinging onto Riley, he shouted it right into her ear.

She made a face to indicate that this wasn't very pleasant for her.

"Alright, please turn your volume down a little. Your voice sounds distorted when you shout right in my ear like that."

"S-sorry. I forgot," he apologized in a surprisingly quiet tone.

Foxy would never forget how Riley could hardly understand Freddy when she first met him. The redhead was hard of hearing and his constant shouting only made it more difficult for her to understand him.

"We'll help you get your Pogs, right?" Baby looked towards Foxy.

"Yeah, of course."

With that, the three of them started heading towards the storage room in the basement.

For once, Foxy wasn't terrified to go down there.

Freddy finally let go of Baby when they reached their destination.

"Okay, where are they?"

"Up th-there!" Freddy pointed to a shoebox at the very top of a shelf near the door.

Baby, being ridiculously tall, easily reached up and grabbed it.

"Here you go, Fred."

"Yay! Thank you!"

Then, without warning, he glanced at the floor and jumped onto Baby once more, climbing up her like she was a tree.

"There's another sp-sp-spider!"

"That wasn't a spider, that was a ball of fuzz," she said, her voice muffled by his chest.

"...Are y-you sure?"

Foxy crouched down to inspect whatever Freddy had spotted on the floor. "Yep, that's fuzz."

"Oh...n-nevermind then!" He let go of Baby and grabbed his Pogs, running out the door. "C'mon, g-guys!"

Baby groaned, shouting something about how he was going to hurt himself running up the stairs as she followed after him.

Normally, Foxy wouldn't have stayed behind. But something caught his eye.

He glanced over his shoulder before crouching back down near the ball of fuzz.

A little bit past it, partially hidden underneath an old desk, was something circular.

He reached out and grabbed it.

It was a little disc about the size of a half-dollar coin.

He was immediately struck with some sort of unpleasant feeling that he couldn't quite explain.

The disc must have fallen out of that box Afton stole when he broke in for a second time.

"Stupid thing." Foxy frowned. He dropped the disc back onto the floor and stood up. "You helped nearly get me and all of my friends killed. I hate you and your brethren."

Maybe that wording was a bit dramatic. And the disc obviously couldn't hear him because it was an inanimate object, but that was how he felt.

He hated that stupid thing.

Without a second thought, he crushed the disc beneath the heel of his boot and left the room to find where Freddy and Baby went.


	2. Bandages

Foxy and Riley ended up playing Pogs with Freddy for so long that by the time they were done, they could put that second coat on the wall.

"I feel like no human has ever played Pogs for four consecutive hours before. Do you think we broke some kind of record?" Foxy asked as he tied his hair back again. He wasn't about to get paint in his hair. He'd throw a fit if he did.

"Probably," Baby replied.

"Should we try to get that in a record book?"

"Definitely not. I don't want that to be my only known achievement when I die."

"Understandable."

There were a few minutes of comfortable silence between them before Foxy remembered something.

"Oh yeah, by the way, when we were in the basement I found one of those disc-things that made those nasty robots we fought all distorted and fleshy-looking. I think Afton dropped it when he broke in. The second time, I mean."

"What did you do with it?" She didn't look at him when she asked.

"I busted it. But I was thinking that maybe we should go through the stuff down there to see if we have anything else of his. I was also thinking that we should probably fix that basement window sometime."

"I'll make a note about that window. And we can go through that stuff tomorrow after we close."

Foxy looked at Riley in surprise. "You _don't _want to do it today?"

"No, it's too late now. It can wait. I don't want anything of his in here, but with him gone it can't hurt us to have it for a little longer."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

"You _do _realize that it's only eleven, right? And that you regularly stay up until like, three in the morning?"

"I do realize that. But I feel like I still haven't caught up on the sleep I missed while I was gone."

"Ah, that makes sense."

That seemed as if it should have been obvious. Riley had mentioned a few days ago that she had spent as little time sleeping as possible on her way back. Mostly because sleeping on the forest floor/the side of a back road probably didn't leave her feeling very safe. Of course she was more tired than usual.

They both drew back from the wall, making sure they hadn't missed a spot.

Foxy looked sideways at Riley, feeling the strong urge to say something even though he was almost sure of the response he'd get.

"You know, you _could _take a day off for once if you wanted. You're not required to work all day every day. Especially when you're more exhausted than usual and still recovering from injuries."

She spared him a glance before her gaze flicked down to her hands. Her fingers and palms were bandaged and her left wrist was in a homemade splint.

And that was just her hands.

She shrugged him off.

"I can still work just fine. I don't need time off."

Yep. That was the answer he expected.

He gave her an unamused look and she continued.

"_All _of us have already had enough time off during our little escapade. We don't need more."

"I'm not sure if I'd count that as time off. It was ten times more stressful than this job."

The only response Foxy received from that was a look of unsurmountable stubbornness telling him he wouldn't win.

He didn't say anything else, silently accepting defeat.

But that was fine.

Things were fine.

And they were slowly getting better day by day.


	3. Cleaning Up and Clearing Out

"Where are you going?"

Riley threw a quick glance towards Ballora as she pulled the hood of her green jacket over her head.

"Out," she answered.

Foxy looked up from the table he had been cleaning, giving the redhead a funny look. "But we open soon."

"I know, but it's important. I have to go. I'll try to come back as soon as I can, though. In the meantime, Lor is in charge. Don't let anything catch on fire."

Without another word, she went straight out the front door and vanished somewhere around back.

There was a moment of silence following the strange behavior.

"...That's funny. She's normally super specific about where she's going."

"Yes, that was rather odd. But after all that we've experienced in recent months, I don't think that's the strangest behavior we've seen."

"I guess so." Foxy went back to cleaning the table.

It was around twelve in the afternoon when Baby finally returned, which was right about when they got kinda busy. Actually, they weren't just kinda busy. For the first time in a while, they were swamped.

She popped out of the entrance to the back rooms, pulling her mask down over her face.

Bon-Bon decided to open his mouth once he spotted her. "Oh, hey. You've finally decided to come back from your life-altering journey or whatever. What took you so long, Clown? Cops get an anonymous tip about the body you keep in the trunk of your car?"

Foxy could only sort of make out his high-pitched voice through the crowd of laughing, shrieking, and crying children.

He thought to himself that the rabbit was probably making that comment around the _wrong_ person.

But, to his bewilderment, Baby simply chuckled. "Don't be ridiculous. You know I don't have a car."

In hindsight, maybe that response wasn't too unexpected. Foxy had noticed the animosity between the two of them had fizzled significantly since everything had ended...well, it had on Baby's side, anyway. Bon-Bon still enjoyed pushing buttons regardless of whose buttons they were.

Foxy would know, he got made fun of in the morning for deciding to wear stripes. And for accidentally getting eyeliner over the bridge of his nose when Freddy scared him. And for nearly falling on his face when he entered the kitchen.

He started wading his way through the small blockade of children between him and his boss. He could hear Bon-Bon make some remark about how she probably stole one as he managed to break through the end of the barrier, stumbling a bit.

"Baby!"

"Hullo, Fox."

Foxy was tempted to ask her where she had gone, but decided against it and stuck to asking what he had originally planned to.

"Are we still doing that thing after work?"

"Yep," she replied, popping the 'p'. "We can do it right after we finish closing up if you want."

"Alright, cool."

With that, Foxy went back to actually doing his job, a slight feeling of anxiousness for upcoming events washing over him.

He couldn't quite tell whether it was more fueled by fear or some sort of eagerness.

And the fact that work seemed to go by ten times slower after that conversation didn't seem to help very much. It was also unusual, considering the fact that everything around him continued to be complete chaos.

There was running on the tabletops, there was screaming (lots and _lots_ of screaming), things were being thrown, Ballora at one point got quite literally swept away by a swarm of children.

It took longer than it usually did for them to clean up after the last customer had left.

But eventually, after what felt like a genuine eternity, they managed to finish.

Freddy and Ballora disappeared off into their rooms and Foxy and Baby got ready to check out the basement.

They both pulled off the outermost layers of their work clothes and tossed their masks onto one of the recently cleaned tables before making their way to the basement.

"So," Foxy started as they made their way to the basement storage room, "out of curiosity, do you have any idea how those disc-things even got here in the first place? I didn't think you'd want to hold onto anything of his."

"Uh...well, Michael and I moved out of our mother's house around the same time. She wanted us to toss away some of the old junk he had laying around before we left. I mean, we were already packing and getting rid of stuff, so why not?"

They reached the bottom of the stairs.

"Some of the boxes probably got mixed up since we were attempting to do both things at once. That's the only reason I could think of why that stuff might be here, anyway. Either that or it just fucking materialized in here."

"Both of those theories sound pretty plausible to me."

Foxy opened the storage room's door, flicking on the light switch.

He looked towards his friend. "Okay, where do you think—" Suddenly, he cut himself off. "Wait a second, something's different about you."

Baby raised an eyebrow, seemingly genuinely unaware of where this was going. "Yeah?"

"Yeah..."

Foxy stared at her for a minute, squinting.

And then it finally hit him.

"Oh, I know! You're not wearing your contacts."

The vivid, bright blue of her contacts was gone and instead replaced with her actual eye color - forest green. Foxy probably hadn't noticed earlier because she had been wearing her mask.

"Ah. I must've forgotten to put them in."

"You look kinda weird without them. Not in a bad way. I mean like..." he paused, unable to find the right words, "I dunno. It's like I'm not actually looking into _your _eyes 'cause you've got somebody else's in your skull."

"I guess that makes sense. You've only seen me without my contacts once so you're still not used to it," she said. "But back to what we were doing, where do you think we should start?"

"Uh...maybe around there?" He gestured to the general area that he had found the disc in.

"Alright."

They ended up finding some more of Afton's junk after about eighteen minutes of searching.

The first thing was wrapped in a couple of dishtowels and a bit of duct tape. It ended up being a crude metal arm that was chopped off at the elbow. Well, maybe it was actually some sort of glove? It was almost completely hollowed out on the inside, and the forearm was comprised of two metal plates held together by leather straps that could probably be tightened.

Foxy nearly cut his finger open when he accidentally poked one of the sharp talons at the ends of the fingers. "Okay, ow."

"You alright?"

"Yeah, I just didn't realize that the fingers on this thing were actually claws."

He passed the arm to Riley, who carelessly tossed it into an empty box that was sitting on an unused desk.

They found a handful of blue pins (they were each about the size of Foxy's index finger), a few more of those small discs that had fallen, and a couple of random circuit boards not long after.

They stopped looking once they had successfully swept through the whole entire room.

"I think that's all of it." Foxy felt about as dusty as everything in the room was.

Baby picked up the box. "I'm gonna go chuck this shit into the dumpster," she said tonelessly.

The two of them then headed back up the rickety staircase and were about to part ways near the back door before Foxy stopped. "Oh wait, Riley, do you have your keys?"

"I do." Riley made just about it halfway through the back door before she paused. "Wait."

Foxy paused too, turning back around to look at her. "Yeah?"

She directed her gaze at the forest lining the parking lot rather than at him. "Could I ask you to do something for me?"

"Probably," he responded.

"Could you please start calling me Elizabeth instead of Riley?"

Well, that was far off of whatever vague idea Foxy had about what she was going to ask.

"Sure," he said. "I'll call you whatever you want to be called. I'm a little surprised, though. I thought you hated that name."

"I—" she cut herself off and shrugged. "Things change. And...I don't know, it doesn't really feel like it holds the same weight that it used to."

"Alright...Elizabeth." It felt weird to say, but Foxy was sure he would get used to it quickly.

He continued off down the hallway as Elizabeth went to throw Afton's junk into the dumpster.


	4. The Visit

"C'mon, pick up..."

It seemed that Charlie had recently fallen back into hardly being at home, instead choosing to chase something that she wasn't even completely sure was really there anymore.

At the current moment, she was at some place in the middle of town and had just so happened to run into Chief Burke.

He was just about to get into his car when he spotted her.

After the initial surprise of running into her, he shared something interesting with her.

Well, perhaps interesting wasn't the right word. Unpleasant would be more appropriate.

So Charlie was standing near a payphone, listening to it ring.

She drummed her fingers on the hood of the payphone impatiently as she did so. The ringing didn't seem like it was ever going to end.

But eventually, someone picked up.

Or at least, she was pretty sure someone did.

Garbled static noise came from the other end before she could say anything.

And then, abruptly, the call ended.

Charlie stared down at the phone in her hand for a moment.

"Alright then."

She was tempted to try and call once again but found that she had no more quarters.

That was bad. She needed to tell them.

So she then decided the next best logical course of action was to visit in person.

Yeah, that sounded like a good idea.

She crossed the parking lot to reach her old, beat-up car before setting off, trying hard not the dwell on what she had heard just yet.

The drive was probably about twenty-five minutes long. But it didn't feel that way. It felt way longer. It felt like every car that drove in front of her was going way under the speed limit. Every red light she stopped at felt like it was never going to turn green again.

When she finally reached the building, she found that the parking lot was empty.

For a second, Charlie thought they may have been closed. It wouldn't have been a surprise if they were. The sun was getting low in the sky.

But she got out of her car anyway.

It had been weeks since she had set foot on the property. It felt the same way it had before. A bit sad and lonely, but strangely inviting.

The closer to the front she got the more unopened the place looked.

The interior visible behind the windows was shrouded in darkness.

However, there was _some _light.

Something dim resting near the cash register. It appeared to be a cheap, battery-powered lantern or something of the like.

The door was locked.

Charlie hesitantly knocked, despite nobody being in sight.

But somebody _was_ there.

Foxy popped up from behind the counter, setting a small box on its surface. He spotted her and she awkwardly waved.

He clumsily jumped over the counter, pulling his keys from his pocket as he walked over.

He fumbled with them for a moment before managing to unlock the doors.

"Charlie! What are you doing here?"

"I need to talk to you guys," she explained. "Why are you sitting in the dark?"

"Oh, we're having some sort of issue with our power. We haven't figured out _why _quite yet, but Freddy and Bon-Bon are investigating it." Foxy started leading her towards the door to the back rooms. "Anyway, what did you need to talk about? Is it super important?"

"Sort of, yeah. It's about..." she stopped dead in her tracks, trailing off.

The door in front of them had swung open and a tall woman walked out. She stopped too, locking eyes with Charlie.

Foxy looked between the two of them as they remained stock-still and silent.

He realized that when Ballora told him to call Charlie and tell her that Elizabeth wasn't dead, he hadn't _actually _done it.

He was going to. He remembered picking up the phone and dialing the first half of her number, but he didn't end up dialing the second half because Bon-Bon came flying into the room and hit him in the head.

Foxy got into an argument with Freddy because of it. He was so annoyed and distracted afterward that he completely forgot to actually make the call.

"Oh, crap... I supposed to tell you that she isn't dead. I'm so sorry, Charlie. I completely forgot."

Charlie gave Foxy a quick look, not saying anything before she looked back towards Elizabeth.

She scanned over her face, seemingly searching for something.

"You're not dead," she stated. It was supposed to be a question but it didn't come out that way.

"I'm not," Elizabeth replied.

"How?"

"The wolf and I managed to avoid being crushed by rubble. I escaped its grasp and clawed my way out of what was left of the building."

"How long did that take?"

"Couldn't tell you exactly. Definitely days, though."

"Did you get badly injured?"

"Not really, all things considered."

"Riley—"

"Elizabeth now."

There was a pause in the exchange.

Foxy was unsure if he should say anything or not.

He felt like he was standing in the middle of some sort of rehearsed interrogation session or something.

There was practically no gap between question and answer. One would start speaking the very second after the other finished.

"...When did you start having issues with your power?"

"Around thirty minutes ago, I think."

"Did anyone else around you lose power?"

"Don't know."

"Have any other issues around here lately?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

"Well, I think you guys should really start keeping an eye out again."

"And why would that be?"

"I think you should all hear it at once."

There was yet another pause, though this one wasn't quite as long as the first.

"Then I guess we better go get everyone."

We?

Elizabeth grabbed Foxy's wrist and dragged him into the back rooms.

"What was that all about?" he blurted out after they were halfway down the hall.

"What was what all about?"

"That conversation. It was weird."

Elizabeth shrugged, finally releasing his wrist. "No idea." She spoke again before Foxy could say anything in response. "You grab Lor and I'll grab Fred and Bon."

She disappeared down one of the other hallways.

"...Okay."


	5. Bearer of Bad News

Charlie waited in the darkness of the building for everyone to show up.

She elected to sit at one of the numerous tables, placing the small lantern that Foxy had left behind on the tabletop.

She repeatedly checked her cracked wristwatch. It still felt as if time was moving at a snail's pace.

Another full minute passed by before the door to the back rooms finally opened again and everybody filed out.

Foxy, Ballora, and Freddy (with Bon-Bon) all dropped into seats on the opposite side of the table.

Elizabeth decided to stand off to the side.

Freddy and Ballora both greeted her.

Bon-Bon made some sort of noise.

Charlie greeted them back with a small smile, pushing the lantern closer to the center of the table.

There was a small and uncomfortable stretch of silence after that.

And they all looked at her expectantly.

"...Alright, so, I ran into Chief Burke in town earlier today."

"How is he?" Ballora asked.

"He's doing good. But he uh, he stopped me because he had something important to tell me."

Charlie started drumming her fingers on the table.

They all continued to look at her with a variety of facial expressions.

"It was recently discovered that William Afton's body was...fake."

Freddy's expression went blank.

Ballora turned her head away, covering her mouth with her hand

Bon-Bon rather loud said, "Are you _fucking _kidding me?"

Foxy let his head drop onto the table, only to lift it up a few seconds later to give Elizabeth a sideways glance, evidently trying to gauge her reaction.

But there wasn't one.

There was nothing. Nothing at all.

"Fake?" Ballora repeated, voice slightly muffled by her hand.

"Yeah, fake. Not a real body."

"Well, it was definitely real when we saw it."

"And surely, when the body was recovered _someone_ would have noticed if it was fake. Especially after all the time that's passed."

"Do you think he faked his death or something? That he's actually still alive?"

"Well, there's one thing for sure...there's no actual corpse," Charlie said. "Maybe...maybe he used one of those illusion discs to make one of those plastic dolls look like him? I don't know..."

An uncomfortable silence filled the air again.

The room felt much darker all of a sudden.

Charlie realized that the sun had gone down completely.


	6. A Seemingly Never-Ending Nightmare

The group spent hours discussing Afton's apparent survival of their last encounter with him.

They talked about how they shouldn't have been shocked since he had faked his death before. That was how he managed to fly under the radar for so many years.

They drummed up more loose theories about how he could have faked it, but nobody was really sure.

They questioned whether or not he would show up and try to dispose of them, now presumably believing that he had an advantage over them.

Foxy and Charlie did most of the talking.

Ballora and Freddy only occasionally chimed in.

Sometimes Bon-Bon would pipe up when he thought somebody said something stupid.

Elizabeth didn't really say much of anything. She just stared past all of them.

It was actually difficult to tell if she was listening to a word of what they were saying or not.

Eventually, the conversation ended because Charlie said that she had to leave.

Everyone started to slowly shuffle out of the room once she had gone.

Foxy was second to last to get up.

He looked towards Elizabeth, who had finally taken a seat at some point. She was still staring somewhat blankly across the room.

Her complete lack of reaction had struck him as kinda odd.

Usually, the mere mention of Afton still walking was enough to make her demeanor change drastically.

Well, Foxy supposed that her current behavior _did _also count as a change of demeanor. It just wasn't the kind he was used to seeing.

"...Are you alright?"

Her gaze flicked up to up to him after a moment. "Yeah." There was nothing different in her voice. It was as even as it usually was.

"Are we...going to do something?"

Her posture slackened.

A strange sight, considering how ridiculously stiff it usually was.

"What do you think we should do?" she asked.

Foxy shrugged. "I dunno. What we did last time, I guess. Try to track him down."

"We have practically nothing to go off of. There's nothing to track."

"...Well, you know, after we thought you were...gone...we had almost nothing to go off of. But we still managed."

She didn't respond.

The next day seemed to come quickly. They were closed because it was a holiday.

By the time Foxy had managed to drag himself out of bed, Freddy and Bon-Bon were already working on the power again, Elizabeth had vanished without explanation again, and Charlie had already come back.

Charlie and Ballora were sitting at the same table they had all sat at last night. Likely because the front of the building was the only place with a decent amount of natural lighting.

Foxy couldn't quite catch what either of them were talking about because they were keeping their voices low.

Neither of them noticed him come into the room.

He was about to say something to announce his presence but was cut off by the power coming back on.

There was some distant shouting. It sounded vaguely like some sort of victory screech from Freddy and loud groaning from Bon-Bon.

The door Foxy was standing near flew open and nearly hit him.

"We g-got the power b-back on!"

"Nice job, Freddy." Ballora smiled. "Do you know why it went out in the first place?"

Freddy shook his head. "Nope! I j-just kept touching stuff until s-s-something happened."

"Oh, alright."

Foxy stepped out from behind the door that his face nearly got acquainted with moments ago, blinking as he tried to regain his composure.

It was only then that somebody noticed him there.

Namely Charlie.

She quickly stood up.

"Foxy! I need to talk to you."

"Me?" he asked stupidly.

"Yeah, it's important." She grabbed his arm and pulled him into the back.

Apparently, this conversation needed to take place in private.

"I did a little thinking before I came back here. There are some questions I need to ask you," she quickly explained.

She kept glancing over her shoulder, as if she was expecting somebody to come down the hallway.

"Oh?" Foxy wasn't too sure where this was going.

Maybe he would've had some vague idea if he wasn't so focused on the way the Charlie kept looking around.

"Please, uh, be as accurate and descriptive as you can."

To Foxy's slight surprise and confusion, Charlie pulled out a tape recorder.

"It's important," she repeated.

"Okay..." he replied as she pushed down the record button.

Charlie ended up spending a good twenty minutes asking Foxy questions.

He felt weird. He also found himself looking around a lot, but only because he felt unsure of where to look.

Eventually, Charlie stopped her tape recorder and tucked it into the back pocket of her jeans.

"Thanks for answering everything," she said. "I've gotta go again. I can come back in a few hours, though. That's okay, right?"

"Uh, sure." Foxy felt no less confused than he had twenty minutes ago.

"Then I'll see you soon."

With that, she pushed through the nearby door and vanished, most likely heading for her car.

Foxy continued to stand in the hallway for another solid minute, attempting to form a cohesive explanation for what had just transpired.

He was only brought out of his thoughts when a door opened somewhere behind him.

He whipped around with a small stab of paranoia in his chest.

Elizabeth was standing there.

"Where were you?" Foxy asked abruptly.

Much like the last time, her response was simple.

"Out."

She walked to the opposite end of the hallway.

Foxy followed after her, stopping near the doorway of her office after she entered it.

"Why were you just standing in the hallway?"

"I was talking with Charlie."

"Oh, she came back already?"

"Yeah. And she just left."

"What did you two talk about?"

"We...she asked me a bunch of questions about you."

Elizabeth seemed somewhat unfazed by this information. "Yeah?"

"Yeah. It was sorta weird."

"Sounds weird."

"It was..."


	7. Snooping

Charlie, as promised, came back a few hours later.

Nobody was around when she unlocked the back door (using a key that Ballora had given her earlier) and let herself in.

She felt uncompelled to announce her presence. She didn't _want _anybody to know that she had arrived, actually.

Charlie drove to an empty parking lot far, _far_ away after she had finished bombarding Foxy with questions. She needed a place to think without the feeling of paranoia hanging over her head.

She listened to the recording she had made on the way there. And she listened to it twice more after she had parked.

She tried, and tried, and _tried_ to formulate some sort of explanation in her head.

But there wasn't one.

Not yet, anyway.

All she knew was that she got strange vibes from Riley — _Elizabeth _the very moment that they had locked eyes.

And they wouldn't seem to go away.

The only other person who seemed to feel the same way was Foxy, who had admitted that he found some of her behavior to be a bit odd.

But he simply brushed it all off as an aftereffect of her near-death experience, which didn't seem like all that crazy of a thing to do.

Though, for whatever reason, it didn't seem like a good enough explanation for Charlie.

She wasn't sure _why_. After all, she had seen Elizabeth practically shut down after the first time that one of Afton's animatronics nearly killed her. The girl's once bubbly and overly excited personality fizzled away completely, leaving almost nothing but apathy in its place.

Charlie had gotten her to smile a few times after she had left the hospital, but, at some point, Elizabeth told her that she wasn't going to smile anymore. She never told her why, though.

And it seemed that after all the time that had passed, Elizabeth had never regained any of her liveliness. It was simply...gone.

But despite having seen those changes with her own eyes, despite knowing that what Foxy had told her was very possible, she couldn't find it in herself to believe it.

Something felt wrong.

She saw something in Elizabeth's eyes when she came out of the back hallways, presumably to speak to Foxy. There was a small flash of something similar to a deer in headlights, followed by something unwelcoming.

And Charlie was going to figure out what it meant.

Her plan wasn't particularly detailed. She was going to hunt for something to solidify her suspicions while her presence remained unknown, and then...uh...she'd think of something.

Abruptly, Charlie skidded to a halt, finding herself standing in front of the room she had been looking for.

Elizabeth's office.

There was no light spilling out from under the door, meaning that it was more than likely empty.

With slight hesitation and a nervous glance at her surroundings, Charlie very quickly opened the door and slipped inside before somebody had the chance to pass by.

She pulled out a flashlight. It was an old, small, metal one that she had instinctively grabbed from her glovebox before coming inside. It wasn't as bright and obvious as the ceiling light, making it less likely to let somebody outside the door know that she was inside.

Well, as long as she didn't shine it right at the door, anyway.

"Now what?" Charlie muttered to herself as her eyes surveyed the small space. She had never actually set foot in it before.

She felt a little bad. She was about to dig through her friend's personal belongings without permission.

But her gut was telling her that she _had _to do it. It was important.

She took a deep breath.

The space was fairly messy.

Maybe the desk would be a good place to start? That was were a lot of people kept personal stuff, right?

The desktop had a multitude of items on its surface, most of which were pushed toward the edge so that there'd actually be a place to do work. There was a cup with pens and pencils in it, an envelope holder with a number of bills in it, a stapler, and other similar office supplies. The only thing that looked to be of actual personal value was a picture frame that, for some reason, had been turned around.

Charlie picked the frame up and flipped it over.

The picture was of a mother and three kids. Two boys and one girl. It was evident that there used to be another person in the frame, but they had been cropped out.

It didn't take a genius to figure out who the missing person in the family photo was.

She placed it back down.

She moved a few stray papers around. Nothing interesting, really.

Though, Charlie did note that the wood underneath was cut and scratched - as if somebody had just taken a knife or pair of scissors to it out of frustration or something.

In the drawers, she mostly found more office supplies, a few more photos (that were more recent), and a small leather-bound book.

It was a _diary._ Or journal, whatever.

Charlie flipped through it, really only paying attention to the dates scrawled at the top of the pages. Interestingly enough, it seemed that Elizabeth made entries rather frequently, but the most recent one was from about a month back.

More specifically, it was from around the time that a body had been found behind the building, which Foxy had told Charlie about because he thought she looked disturbingly similar to the dead woman.

The handwriting in the entry was noticeably more unreadable than it was in the others.

_'I think he's back. I thought he was dead and gone, but I'm not so sure anymore. Fox found a dead woman behind the dumpster after work. I knew right away that it was his doing...the way she was killed, the animatronic eye and wires that were in the chest cavity...I reached in and pulled them out with my bare hand, by the way. I'm not really sure what came over me? My head started feeling fogged up the moment I laid eyes on the body. I couldn't think properly. I didn't want to believe that it was his doing._

_I tried to search for things that would tell me my suspicions were wrong. I kept trying, even after Chief Burke said exactly what I was thinking out loud. Hearing it felt like being smacked in the back of the head with a fucking shovel. _

_And now it's finally sunk in. I'm still not all that sure if I'm thinking straight, but I don't care. I've decided that I'm going to find him. I don't want him to hurt more people than he already has.'_

The date at the top of the page was more unusual to Charlie than the actual entry itself.

She took a step back and accidentally hit something with the back of her heel.

It was a box. A box that was sticking halfway out from under a small cabinet up against the wall.

Not the best place to put it, really.

But now that her attention was on it, maybe its contents were worth a look.

Charlie placed the journal on the desk, knelt down, and held the flashlight with her teeth as she pulled the flaps of the box open.

There were a number of items inside.

The most prominent thing was half of a metal arm. It was somewhat crude-looking with extremely sharp points at the end of each finger. Charlie noticed that the inside of it was mostly gutted once she picked it up and set it aside.

Next, she found a handful of large blue pins, a few of those illusion discs, and a couple of old circuit boards scattered atop a dark, dirty, stained, clothing item.

She swept all of the small stuff aside and pulled at the dark fabric.

It took a moment for her to discern what it was supposed to be. It was so shredded that it appeared amorphous at first.

Eventually, Charlie figured out that it was a jacket. She recognized it as the one Riley had worn in the warehouse.

A few things fell out of it when she fully unfolded it.

There was a lighter, an old pushbutton knife, a bottle of something red with the label torn off, and what looked like a bunch of photographs rubber-banded into a roll.

Charlie carefully put the other items back (despite still finding them weird) and decided to focus on the photos.

She felt a bit of hesitance as she slowly pulled the rubber band off. Partially because she still felt bad for being super intrusive and partially because she was afraid of what she'd find.

There were about twenty photos, all of which seemed to contain the same few people in them.

There was the photographer, whose feet and hands were sometimes visible within the frame. They clearly weren't too concerned about the composition of any of the photos.

And then there was the main subject, who appeared to be dead.

The first photo featured them laid sloppily on a dirty concrete floor, their face somewhat hidden by their hair.

A long dark stain that trailed from the person's head and up out of the frame indicated that they had been dragged.

The second photo was taken much closer to the deceased individual, showing them from the shoulders up. The photographer's hand was visible, forcing the person's head to face the camera. Their features were almost indiscernible due to how badly their face had been damaged.

The rest of the photos were very similar.

Charlie felt very wrong looking at them. They were incredibly disturbing.

_What did they mean?_

She didn't have time to think about it.

She could hear footsteps.

Somebody was approaching the door.


	8. Enter

Somebody was approaching the door.

_Shit._

Charlie turned her flashlight off, hastily put everything back into the box, and kicked it back under the cabinet.

The door handle started to turn.

She practically threw herself into the space under the desk.

The door opened.

Somebody stepped in.

It was the clown herself.

Who else would it have been?

She, like the individual hiding in the room, didn't bother turning on the light.

Charlie held her breath as the tall woman made her way over to the desk.

By some miracle of Scott, she didn't walk around to the other side. She simply stopped in front of it.

She muttered something.

And then, to her horror, Charlie realized that she had forgotten to put the journal back where she had found it.

She could hear it being flipped through.

It was almost as if Elizabeth had never seen it before or something.

There was a pause and a short laugh before the journal was carelessly tossed back onto the desk.

Charlie willed herself not to flinch at the sudden thud.

The drawer above her head opened.

She shrunk further into the desk.

Rummaging sounds followed.

The drawer loudly closed.

Elizabeth left the room and closed the door.

Charlie sat there unmoving for a solid minute afterward.

And then, once she was sure nobody was coming back in, she took the deepest breath she had ever taken in her life and let her head fall back against the desk.

She looked down at the small stack of photos that were still in her hand. She had forgotten that she was still holding them.

After crawling back out from under the desk, Charlie re-rolled them and placed the rubber band back around them.

Not all of them, though. She left two out. The first two she had looked at.

The rest were placed back into the blood-stained jacket.

She attempted to rearrange the items in the box so that it didn't look like she had been riffling through them.

Her hand lingered over the pushbutton knife for a second.

For some odd reason, she felt the compulsive urge to take it with her. It suddenly felt very wrong to leave a knife in Elizabeth's possession.

Charlie ended up taking it and put everything else back properly, sliding the box back into the position that she found it in.

She stood up and grabbed a pen out of the cup on the desk. She wrote something onto the back of both photos, folded them, and then stuck them into the pocket of her jeans.

Nobody appeared to be nearby when she opened the door just a crack, so Charlie took the opportunity to leave the office as quickly as possible.

Not long after, she rounded a corner and nearly slammed into somebody.

Somebody who let out some sort of noise in surprise.

"Charlie! When did you get back here?"

She didn't answer his question.

Instead, she casually stuck something into the breast pocket of his t-shirt.

"Wha—?"

"I gotta go again. But I'll come back around sometime soon. Try not to do anything without me."

"But didn't you just get here?"

She still didn't respond. She was already halfway down the hall.

Foxy was thoroughly confused

What was that all about?

Slowly, he left the spot where he stood and went to his room - which was where he had been heading before that encounter.

He didn't check his pocket until the door was closed behind him.

It seemed that Charlie had given him some folded up photographs and a cassette tape.

The cassette was likely from her conversation with him earlier.

He set it down onto his desk and decided to focus on the photos. He hadn't the slightest idea what they could be.

The same sentence was written on the back of each one.

_'Look at this and listen to yourself again.'_

He unfolded them and flipped them over.

His heart dropped.


	9. Freezing Up

"_Try not to do anything without me._"

What was that supposed to mean?

Foxy had absolutely no idea what to do.

It had been a few hours since he first looked at the photos.

He was still in his room, trying to drum up possible theories and explanations. All of them sounded ridiculous when he (quietly) said them out loud to himself.

The photos Charlie had given him was propped up against a can sitting on his desk. They were both flipped over so that only the writing on the back showed.

He had attempted to keep looking at them as the tape played, but found that he couldn't do it.

They were just too unpleasant.

"C'mon, Alex. Think of _something,_" he muttered to himself.

Really, the only way to get concrete answers to his questions would be to ask his boss directly.

But Foxy knew that was a really stupid idea.

Perhaps he could be incredibly vague about it?

Yes, that seemed like it might work. He could beat around the bush a bit with vague questions that seemed random.

He tore a piece of paper out of the notebook that sat in front of him.

He tried to come up with questions that wouldn't sound super suspicious.

A lot of them ended up being crossed out. They weren't good enough.

Eventually, he ended up with only one question left untouched on the paper.

Better than nothing, he supposed.

He reread it about five or six times, trying to really drill it into his head.

"Okay...now I just have to find her."

He made sure to pause the tape before leaving his room.

It didn't take very long to find Elizabeth. She was in the kitchen talking to Ballora.

Foxy approached from behind, anxiousness beginning to crawl up his throat. "Elizabeth?"

She turned to face him. "What'cha need, Fox?"

"I—" Foxy forgot how to speak the moment her eyes met his.

There was something different in her eyes and he couldn't quite describe what it was.

The question he had prepared completely vanished from his head.

It was _one _question.

A single fucking sentence.

Elizabeth and Ballora watched his wide-eyed silence with raised eyebrows.

Foxy couldn't recall an occasion in which his words had failed him so badly before.

His face started to turn red.

"Are you okay?" Elizabeth asked slowly.

She took a step towards him.

He took two steps back.

"I'm fine!" he sputtered out.

Unsurprisingly, that did nothing to convince her.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes!" Without another word, Foxy ran off.

He didn't stop until he was back in his room and the door was shut behind him.

His back remained pushed up against the closed door for a long while after, his eyes lingering on the backs of the photos.

"Well, that went well."

Someday, Foxy would learn to keep it together when he was nervous or afraid.

But this was not that day, apparently.

Somebody knocked on the door.

He flinched at the sudden sound.

The sharp rap was followed by a voice.

"Fox?"

He inhaled sharply. "Yeah?"

His voice cracked.

Wonderful.

"You sure you're alright? Don't think I've ever seen you freeze up like that before. Well, not in casual conversation, anyway."

"I'm sure. Guess I'm just a little high strung because of the whole Afton thing, you know?" He forced a small laugh.

"If you say so." Elizabeth paused for a moment. "Try not to think about him too much, alright? You'll drive yourself crazy."

With that, she walked away.

And for once, Afton was not quite the thing that Foxy feared.


	10. Another Attempt

Foxy decided to give the whole question-thing another try the next day.

He poked his head into Elizabeth's office after work.

She was going through a bunch of paperwork by the looks of it.

He took a deep breath and knocked on the doorframe a few times to get her attention.

"Riley? Sorry, Elizabeth?"

She looked up. "Hey, what's up?"

"I...uh..."

Once again, Foxy forgot what he was going to say.

He wanted to slap himself.

"Could you..."

He attempted to come up with _something _to say. If he wasn't going to ask the stupid question he at least needed to say _something._

"Could you help Freddy with a math problem? He's playing '_Fredbear and Friends: Learning The Power of Multiplication' _on the computer and he's stuck on a problem. He wanted me to ask you."

Foxy had seen Freddy playing it on his way over. He was struggling a bit from what he could see.

Elizabeth quickly glanced down at the paper in front of her before meeting his eyes again.

"Well, I'd love to help. But you know that I absolutely suck at math. Like, a lot. try asking Lor instead."

Foxy narrowed his eyes. "Alright."

He stood in the same spot for an uncomfortably long period of time before awkwardly shuffling away.

That hardly went any better.

He wasn't quite sure what his problem was, but it was clear that he ought to try something else.

But what?

He brushed shoulders with someone as he walked down the hallway.

"Oh, sorry, Bal."

"It's alright."

Suddenly, Foxy stopped, whipping around to face her again.

"Wait!" he shouted.

Ballora flinched at the volume of his voice. "Yes?"

Foxy grabbed the dancer's shoulders, guiding her further down the hallway and around the corner.

He poked his head back around it, making sure that Elizabeth didn't come out of her office before turning towards Ballora, who had an eyebrow raised in question, looking at him expectantly.

And then he lowered his voice, remembering that despite the fact that Elizabeth's hearing wasn't very great it was possible that she'd hear him shouting ten feet away from her office.

"Alright, you're really smart and stuff. I need your help with something." Foxy looked over his shoulder once more before continuing. "It has to do with Baby."

"Does it now?"

"Yeah. Have noticed how she's been kinda different since she came back?"

"Well, yes. She nearly died, Foxy. I don't think that a slight change in her demeanor is completely out of the realm of plausibility."

"I know," Foxy said quickly. "I thought the same thing. But now I think it's because of something else."

"Like what?"

"I don't know. That's what I'm trying to figure out."

Ballora looked at Foxy as if what he was saying was complete nonsense.

"Okay, it's not even just the way she's acting. There's other stuff too. Like this!" Foxy reached into his back pocket and pulled out the photos, practically shoving them into her hands.

Try as she might, Ballora couldn't make out either of them with her horribly blurred vision.

They were just a couple of smudged, vaguely square-shaped things to her, really.

She handed them back.

"I'm sorry, but I can't really tell what I'm looking at."

"That's right," Foxy wasn't sure how he had managed to forget that she could barely see. "I'll just describe them to you. They're um, they're both pictures of a dead body..."

Ballora's eyebrows shot up again. "Do we know whose body it is?"

"You see, that's the thing. It looks like..." Foxy uttered the name so quietly that it was barely audible, but Ballora still managed to catch it.

"Are you _absolutely _positive?"

"I mean, it's a little hard to tell. The body's a bit...er, mangled. But it...it can't be a coincidence, can it?"

"I don't know," Ballora said uncertainty. "That doesn't make any sense. Where did you even get those?"

"Charlie gave them to me. Didn't get the chance to ask where she got them from, though."

Her words echoed in the back of his head but their meaning didn't register.

"We need to figure out what's going on. I tried to ask her a subtle question about it, but it didn't go too well."

"Is that why you ran off yesterday?"

Foxy nodded sheepishly, "Yeah. I tried again before I ran into you but that didn't go well either. I ended up asking her if she could help Freddy with a math problem instead of what I intended to ask her. So clearly, I need to try something else. And that's where you come in."

"You want me to help you scheme?"

"Yeah! I think—" Foxy fell silent as Elizabeth very suddenly rounded the corner.

She quirked an eyebrow. "What're you two plotting over here?"

Ballora stood silent as Foxy started to stutter out incoherent nonsense in the most suspicious way possible, his eyes darting back and forth.

Elizabeth flashed him another one of those uncharacteristic smiles. "Jeez, I was kidding. Calm down." And then her expression became more serious. "Unless you two actually are plotting something over here."

"Uhhhh..."

Ballora finally cut in, "No, of course not. Foxy was just telling me about Freddy's math problem."

"Yeah, I figured. Better not leave him hanging for too long." Elizabeth messed up Foxy's hair and walked away.

Ballora and Foxy waited until she was completely out of sight before continuing.

"Thanks for the save."

"You're welcome. But I'm not sure if I know how to help you with this."

"You're not?"

"I just don't think there's a way to be indirect about this. We'd _have_ to be upfront with everything. But knowing Baby, she probably won't give us open answers. Not unless she's stressed to the point of cracking."

"Well, there's gotta be _some _way to get answers." Foxy racked his brain for a solution.

There had to be something they could do.

Suddenly, it came to him.

He snapped his fingers.

"Oh, I have an idea!"

Foxy began to explain a plan he had just thought up, making up many of the finer details as he went along.

The look on Ballora's face did not seem the most supportive as he spoke.

"I'm not trying to sound rude, but that is almost just as crazy as everything else you just told me."

"I think it's a good idea!"

"Foxy. We can't do that."


	11. Bright Light

Elizabeth sighed to herself, trying to make out something, _anything _in the darkness that surrounded her.

She couldn't tell if anyone was around to hear her, but she spoke anyway. "Okay, why the hell am I tied to a chair?"

The familiar click of heeled boots approaching became audible.

A flashlight turned on.

Foxy's face became visible.

His expression was solemn and the high contrast lighting made his face appear very gaunt.

Another flashlight turned on and Ballora appeared right next to Foxy. The harsh shadows were a bit softer on her face than they were on his.

Elizabeth's gaze flicked between the two of them.

"Why am I tied to a chair?" she repeated. "What's this all about? "

Foxy moved his flashlight away from his face and instead pointed it straight at Elizabeth, who barely squinted despite how bright it was.

"We're a little suspicious." He tried to keep his tone level but wasn't really all that successful.

"Suspicious? Suspicious of what?"

"Of you."

"You've gotta be kidding me."

"I am not."

"I still can't believe that I let you talk me into this..." Ballora muttered.

"Let me prepare the questions." Foxy pulled three sheets of paper out of his pocket and started to unfold them.

"I'm a bit offended," Elizabeth said. "Offended that you guys _apparently _don't trust me after all we've been through together."

Foxy and Ballora did feel a bit bad about tying their friend to a chair, but something had to be done.

Neither of them responded to her.

"_Alex, Laura,_" She said their names in the authoritative way that a parent would when they were trying to get you to admit to something. "Why do you feel like you can't trust me?"

"There are a few different reasons." Foxy finally figured out which sheet was supposed to come first.

The set of questions they had prepared was intentionally basic.

They had made a few vague theories while scheming. This mock interrogation session would help figure out if they were all utter garbage or not.

"Alright, first question! Where were you born?"

"Leeds," she answered easily.

Easy question. After all, there was always the slightest cling of an accent to her voice when she said certain words.

Ballora asked the next question. They were taking turns. "How long have you been employed here?"

"Uh...let's see, I started working here were when I was seventeen, and I'm twenty-three now, so, however long that is...six years, right?"

"Where did you meet me?"

"A circus, right? You got yourself knocked out and I had to drag you to a hospital because you had a concussion."

"What about me?"

"You? I met you here. You applied for the opening after Ennard quit."

"And Freddy?"

"I met him here too. Got stuck in one of the trash cans out front and I had to pull him out."

Those answers checked out.

Now onto the "level two" questions.

"Do you remember when the whole thing with Afton started?"

"The second of August. He was on the news."

"When did he show up in our basement?"

"The same day after work."

"What happened after that stairwell collapsed?

"I already told you."

Foxy pulled something out of his shirt pocket and showed it to Elizabeth. "Can you explain to us what _this _is?"

The redhead's eyes went wide. "Where...where did you find that?"

Foxy still didn't know where Charlie got the photos, but he wasn't going to tell Elizabeth that. "That's not important."

"I don't know what the hell that is."

Foxy and Ballora exchanged looks before retreating to one of the darker corners of the room, leaving the flashlights pointed at Elizabeth.

"She answered all of your questions right. I think that blows your theory of her being an imposter out of the water," Ballora whispered, unsurprised that they found no solid evidence towards the Foxy's crazy theory. "And she didn't know what the photo was."

"Okay, but she could've been _acting_ like she was all surprised and had never seen it before. Ooh, another theory. What if the wolf _did _actually capture her and take her to Afton? What if he like, brainwashed her, and then sent her back here?"

Ballora looked at him as if that was equally as ridiculous as his last theory.

"Well, I don't see you coming up with anything!"

There was no chance for her to retort as a loud crash echoed throughout the room.

They spun around, finding the desk chair they tied their boss to laying sideways on the floor. The restraints themselves (a couple of extension cords that Foxy had found in the upstairs storage room) were lying on the floor beneath it.

"She's gone!"

"How?"

"I don't know!"

Foxy and Ballora quickly pushed their way through the half-open office door, speeding down the hallway in search of Elizabeth.


	12. Mismatched Eyes

Ballora and Foxy located Elizabeth and chased her into the back room, where she ended up trapped.

Foxy and Ballora blocked the room's entrance.

Charlie blocked the back door, gripping the door handle so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.

Freddy stood near the counter, having already been in the room before they all ran in. He was told about their little integration session, but not until the plan was already in motion.

He couldn't keep secrets for shit.

"What's going on?" Charlie asked quietly, not taking her eyes off of Elizabeth.

"I told Ballora about the stuff you gave me and we ended up questioning Elizabeth. We uh, may have tied her to a chair. She answered our questions but broke free and ran off when we looked away," Foxy attempted to quickly explain.

"You restrained me. I panicked," Elizabeth said defensively.

There was a short pause before Foxy finally asked, "What are you doing here, Charlie?"

She shrugged, slowly letting go of the door handle. "I told you I'd be back."

"Plotting against me too, huh?"

"In a sense." Charlie walked closer to Elizabeth so that they were only about a foot away from each other.

"You never actually came back from that warehouse, did you?"

"I did." Elizabeth's tone was questioning, but there was something there that implied she already knew exactly what the brunette was getting at.

"I think everybody else was kinda blinded by the fact that their friend was back. They didn't see through your weird behavior. But you're not fooling me. I didn't really understand how you were doing it at first, but I think I've figured it out. I just don't really get why." Elizabeth said nothing, so Charlie continued. "How could pretending to be her possibly benefit you?"

She stepped even closer, pulling something out of the back pocket of her jeans.

She pushed a button and a blade popped out.

It was Elizabeth's knife.

The redhead remained unfazed, despite the sharp object pointed at her face.

"What's your actual name?"

"It's exactly what I said it was."

"Why'd he send you here? Don't tell me he didn't because I know he did. Nobody else would do something like this. Nobody but Afton."

"Your accusations are ridiculous."

"No, I don't think so. I've pieced it all together now. You're a fake." In one sudden, swift movement Charlie brought the blade across Elizabeth's face.

The others, who had remained dead silent, all collectively flinched a bit but did nothing to stop her.

Elizabeth's head remained turned off to the side for a moment before she slowly looked back at brunette in front of her, remaining somewhat unfazed.

Beads of blood started to form, slowly trickling down from the gash. It ran diagonally across her face, going over the bridge of her nose and part of her left eye.

She brought her hand up and ran her index finger partially across the cut, drawing back to examine the blood on her fingertip. Her lips quirked into a near frown.

"Well, that wasn't very nice," she muttered.

Her eye slowly faded from green to gray, as if a light inside had just died.

Charlie stepped back a bit, sticking her hand out. "Hand it over."

Elizabeth's expression remained locked on that slight frown. "Hand what over?"

"You know what. C'mon, there's no point in trying to hide it now."

There was a long stretch of silence between the two.

Charlie continued to stand there with her hand outstretched expectantly.

Neither would break eye contact.

The moment went on for painfully long.

But eventually, Elizabeth slowly reached up and pulled something off from around her neck, still refusing to break eye contact.

It was only after she had dropped the item into Charlie's hand that everyone finally realized what it was.

It was one of Afton's illusion discs tied to a thick black cord like a crude necklace.

Charlie carelessly dropped it onto the floor and crushed it beneath the heel of one of her boots.

Elizabeth's form seemed to flicker a little, flicker and distort in the same way those twisted animatronics did when they burst into flames.

Though, she didn't turn into a razor-edged metal frame with worn, rubbery, transparent skin like they did.

Actually, she didn't really look that different.

Her skin became metal and her complexion went from pale to chalk white. A large seam appeared down the middle of her face, bisecting it into two halves. The cuts across her face, neck, and collarbones became more like scratches in her paint. Her features changed ever so slightly, still looking like Riley's but just a little...off.

When Charlie had claimed that Elizabeth was a fake, she had meant it quite literally.

She was a machine.

Foxy simply could not fathom that one of his stupid theories was actually true.

"Why did Afton make you?"

There was a short pause before Elizabeth answered, "His daughter despised him and refused to regard him as any sort of parental figure anymore, so he just made a new one. He built me to replace what was missing."

"If that's the case, why are you here?" Foxy blurted out. "He's back, so why are you still here? Why did you even come here to begin with?"

"Well, you see, your real friend is dead," she explained tonelessly. "You saw the photos of her body. She died in the warehouse. Not because of fire or falling debris, but because another one of Father's creations managed to get its hands on her. Fought her hardest, she did. But it wasn't enough. Thing mauled her. It was kinda funny, really. Watching it drag her bloody, mangled corpse back. It was almost like watching a dog bring a dead rat back to its master."

At the looks on everyone's faces, she chuckled. One of those low chuckles that came from the back of the throat.

"But I digress. Father has been awful busy since he died. I came here to try and keep your mind off of him for as long as I could. It was going awful well until she showed up." She threw Charlie a dirty look. "Father really thought I could convince you all that I was the real deal—"

"Well, you didn't," Foxy cut her off. "You're not Riley and you never will be."

Elizabeth clenched her jaw and narrowed her eyes at him. He must've struck a chord with that last sentence. "I'll stick my fingers so far into your eye socket that they'll find your brain if you speak again."

Foxy awkwardly broke eye contact with her.

"Anyway, I had to take lots of lessons to learn what everything was like over here. Personally, I think this is all nothing special in comparison to the life he could have given her if she had stayed. Your friend is a moron. She missed out big time. Father tells me that constantly." Quite a bit of bitterness crept its way into her last sentence. "And now, thanks to you, I can return to him and leave this damn monotony."

Despite what Elizabeth had just said to him, Foxy spoke again. "How do you plan on doing that? We have the exits blocked."

"You may think that, but you'd be incorrect." Elizabeth made a grab at the hand Charlie was still holding the knife with. She roughly yanked her arm in an outward half circle to pry the blade from her grip.

Once she had pulled it free, she brought the knife back up and swung it right into Charlie's shoulder.

The stab was incredibly forceful and violent and the blade sunk in before anyone could do anything.

Charlie let out a grunt of pain.

Elizabeth rocked the knife back and forth a bit before yanking it out.

Charlie's hand automatically jumped to her shoulder once it was out, red oozing from between her fingers.

Seconds later the brunette was very roughly shoved into the wall so that Elizabeth could peel out of the back door, disappearing into the forest that lined the parking lot.

Freddy and Foxy went to help Charlie, who was still clutching her shoulder and slowly sinking to the floor.

"Is she gone?" Foxy called to Ballora.

Ballora, who could no longer make out the clown's smudged form crossing the concrete, replied, "I do believe so, yes."

"I'm g-gonna call the emergency n-number!" Freddy announced as he stood up.

Ballora sighed, quickly following him out of the room. "I'm going to go help him. He doesn't know what the number is."

"Guess I'll stay with Charlie." Foxy pulled his sweatshirt off. "We have to apply pressure, right? That's a thing people do. I think."

Charlie was kind of bleeding a lot. And the fact that the knife had been pulled out probably wasn't helping.

The pink of Foxy's sweatshirt started to turn red very quickly

"Does it hurt a lot?"

She laughed awkwardly, "I've been through worse."

"We're gonna have to catch up with her, aren't we?"

"Yeah, of course."

"It never ends, does it?"

"Not from my experiences, no."


	13. Making a Call

"Michael? Okay, I wasn't sure if this was your number or not. Have you heard—? Yes? I thought so. Well, it turns out that Elizabeth was working for him. No, no, it wasn't the real her. It turns out she was a robot. Yes, I'm being serious. The real one is um,"

Once again, Foxy found himself having trouble saying the word. It was like things had gone back to how they were about a month ago. But they now had two problems to deal with and a friend with a stab wound.

"She's still...you know, she's still d-dead."

He looked back the torn, stained jacket that hung off of one of the back room's chairs next to his bloody sweatshirt.

There was a box resting on the table behind it. The items from within it were strewn across the tabletop. Most of them were photographs.

Charlie had mentioned the box to him before the ambulance showed up.

He felt sick as he looked through the rest of the photographs.

The images of his friend's mutilated corpse laying on concrete stained with her own blood would be burned into his head for a long time.

"...We have photos...of her body, I mean. We think he took them, but it's hard to tell. We want to go after him again. Do you want to...? Oh, alright. No, don't meet us there. Meet us at the hospital. The one on Blacktomb...

"Charlie got stabbed by Elizabeth. She's supposed to be okay. She knows more than we do so we figured it'd be smart to talk with her there. We're going in about an hour. Okay, see you there."

Foxy hung up the phone

"Ballora!" he yelled. "Michael is coming!"

"Alright, if you're done talking to him could you please take all of that stuff off of the table and put it into a bag or something? We're taking it with us."

"Sure!" Foxy grabbed a backpack off of the coatrack by the door.

There were a few of his things already in it, but they weren't important so he just dumped them out.

First, he grabbed the jacket.

He felt wrong touching it.

It was stained with dirt, soot, hydraulic fluid, and blood.

His friend's blood.

She _died_ in it.

That creature ripped her to shreds, it...

Foxy shook the thoughts off before they could go any further.

He quickly shoved it into the back pocket of the bag while touching as little of it as possible.

Following it was the lighter and bottle of red stuff which went in the front, as well as of the photographs, which he just swept on in.

There was also a folder crammed full of documents, notes, and newspaper articles they had gone through during their first search for Afton on the table.

Foxy figured he should probably add that to the bag as well.

Apparently, that old junk that Foxy and Elizabeth had cleared from the basement used to be in the box but wasn't anymore.

Maybe that meant something.

Foxy zipped up the bag and headed back into the hallways to find Ballora and Freddy.

He found both of them at the front of the building.

"Have you got all of that stuff, Foxy?"

"Yep."

"Well th-that's good, 'cause w-we've g-got all of the other stuff t-together! Stuff like the car k-keys!" Freddy threw the keys at Foxy, who barely managed to catch them before they could hit him in the face.

"The hospital is rather far away, so we should probably leave now"

"Alright." Foxy was ready to find Afton _and_ Elizabeth and actually put a stop to them.

He was annoyed that all of that hard work they did the first time around meant nothing, that Afton just sprang back like it was nothing.

He was upset that one of his best friends was actually dead and that she had suffered in the process.

He was angry that Elizabeth had come along and impersonated her. That she just showed up at the door and acted like she was her.

She wasn't.

And she never would be.

"Let me warm up the car. You guys can toss the stuff in the trunk."


	14. Back at it Again

"Th-there's an open spot o-over there!"

"Hey, right up front. Nice." Foxy pulled into the parking spot Freddy had pointed out and put the car in park.

He had just started pulling his keys out of the ignition when somebody knocked on the window.

Foxy found Michael and Charlie waving at him when he looked up.

He quickly rolled the window down. "Hey, how long have you guys been out here?"

"About ten minutes. Charlie's been filling me in on the finer details of everything that happened."

"Well, I guess that saves us time." Foxy unlocked the doors. "Hop in. We're just gonna head to a library pretty much around the corner and start our search there. Bal said it'd be quicker than driving back."

Michael and Charlie piled into the backseat with Freddy.

Foxy put the car in reverse and pulled out of the parking spot.

"How's your wound, Charlie?" Ballora asked as soon as they were back onto the road.

Charlie's left arm was in a sling.

"Well, Elizabeth fractured my clavicle when she stabbed me. There's not too much damage beyond that, though. Could've been worse."

Foxy turned on his blinker and took a right. "I hope she loses that knife before we meet her again."

The library was just up the road.

"That's a nice thought, but I doubt that anything Dad builds needs an actual weapon to hurt you."

That was probably true, but Foxy wanted to pretend that it wasn't.

He really didn't need to think about if Elizabeth would jam her fingers into his eye sockets like she had threatened to.

He pulled into the parking lot.

It was getting dark.

The library closed in under an hour, so the parking lot was almost empty.

The only people left inside the library seemed to be the people who worked at it.

None of them said anything to anybody in the group.

They settled themselves down at a table near the back. It was right behind a bookshelf and beside a window that stretched from the floor to the ceiling.

Foxy sat down furthest from the window, dropping the backpack full of Elizabeth and Riley's stuff by his feet. "What should we do first?" he asked.

"We should take a better look at that stuff from the office. She was keeping it hidden so it must be important."

"It's also the most recent clues we have. There haven't been any recent reports or articles about Afton. I've checked," Charlie added on.

Foxy unzipped the bag and plunged his hand inside, pulling out whatever he came in contact with first, which happened to be that red bottle and a couple of those disturbing photographs.

Michael pulled the photos towards himself with a frown on his face.

Freddy took the bottle, twisting the black cap off.

He brought it up to his face.

"Um, Freddy, maybe you shouldn't—"

He stuck his tongue straight into the bottle and tasted...well, whatever it was.

"Shouldn't wh-what?"

"Nevermind." Foxy sighed.

Freddy made an obnoxious sound and squinted at the bottle. "This t-tastes like f-f-fake blood," he announced.

"Why do you know what fake blood tastes like?"

"I g-got curious one day!"

Charlie took the bottle from him. "You know, that would make sense. Elizabeth's blood was just part of the illusion that the disc created, so she probably used this to make her bandages and clothes actually look bloody."

"What else is in that bag, Foxy?" Ballora asked.

"Uh..."

He pulled out the lighter and set it gingerly on the table.

"Her lighter,"

He pulled out the rest of the photos, which Michael took.

"And more of these. That's it."

"What about the jacket? Did you bring it? Some stuff fell out of Riley's jacket the first time I picked it up. Maybe there's still something in there. We could check the pockets."

Foxy stared down at the backpack. One of the jacket's burnt sleeves was sticking out of the partially unzipped back pocket.

He stared at it for a solid minute before he gently pushed the backpack away with his foot.

"Somebody else do it. I don't want to touch it again."

Michael grabbed the bag. "I'll do it."

But he only did it after nobody else moved.

He hesitantly unzipped the bag all the way and pulled the jacket out.

It was so shredded that it took him a second to actually locate one of the pockets.

The pocket was closed by a zipper, which didn't seem to want to budge at first.

Everyone watched as Michael stuck his hand in.

"Nothing," he said.

He tried the other zipper pocket next.

It seemed there _was _something in that one.

Michael pulled his closed fist out and dropped a few items onto the table.

The whole group leaned in to get a better look.

"Let's see here..."

He picked up the first item.

"Busted hearing aid. Definitely hers."

He set it aside.

"Screw,"

Also set aside.

"And a piece of paper."

He unfolded it.

"What's on it?"

"Just some numbers. Two, zero, one, four."

"Does that mean anything to anybody?" Charlie asked.

Everyone shook their heads.

Foxy plopped the folder he had brought onto the table. "Maybe we can find what it means in here?"

"I suppose it's worth a shot."

Foxy, Charlie, and Freddy started to thumb through the old papers.

After a few minutes, Ballora noticed that Michael had not moved.

He was still holding the jacket in one hand and the bit of paper in the other.

She placed a hand on his forearm. "Are you alright?"

"I know."

"Pardon?"

"I know," Michael repeated slightly louder, gaining everybody else's attention. "I know what the numbers mean."

Foxy blinked. "You do?"

"It's a combination. The house we grew up in had a shed in the backyard. The thing was always locked with a number lock and _this_ is the combination. I remember because Dad wouldn't tell me what it was so I spent about three hours figuring it out on my own."

"Are you sure?"

There was no way that they found a lead so quickly.

Finding him was never that easy.

"What if Afton uses that set of numbers as his default password for everything?"

"He wouldn't. That would mean that if somebody got into one of his things, they'd be able to get into all of them. He would never let that happen. He was always really secretive about his work. And the photos were taken in that shed." Michael pointed at one of the photos. "Look, you can even see the lawnmower in the very corner of this one."

He looked up at all of them and nobody said anything. They didn't know what to say.

The silence only ended when an unfamiliar voice spoke up.

"Excuse me?"

Practically the entire group jumped.

There was an elderly librarian standing by their table. "You all have to leave. We're closing up."

"Right, of course. We'll be out the door in a sec." Foxy was aware that his words came out way too quickly.

"Alright, you kids have a nice night."

"You too."

They all watched as she hobbled away.

And the very moment she disappeared around the bookcase, they started to quickly shovel everything on the table back into Foxy's bag.

"Do you remember where the house is?"

"Address never left my head," Michael said.

"And we're going right now?"

"I don't see why we wouldn't be able to." Ballora shrugged. "I think the sooner we deal with this the better."

"And you're coming with us, right, Charlie?"

"Of course, this sling won't stop me."

"Then let's get over there."


	15. Childhood Home

The street on which the Afton home stood looked like it might've been rather nice at some point.

But, as it currently stood, it seemed almost deserted. It was as if it belonged more in a ghost town than it did in theirs.

The houses lining it were all almost identical.

Only one stood out as some sort of outlier.

And of course, that outlier was the one they were heading to.

It was at the very end of the street.

Foxy slowed the car down to a stop near a line of overgrown trees planted by the house neighboring it.

"We're here," he announced, putting the car in park.

This time around, he was actually the first one out of the car.

It was rather cold outside. And foggy.

Freddy grabbed the backpack out of the trunk.

Not the one full of suspicious stuff, but the one that Freddy and Ballora had packed. The one full of things that might be useful.

Like flashlights, which Freddy handed out.

"H-here ya go, Foxy!" He slammed the flashlight into his open palm.

"Thanks." He turned it on, waiting for everybody else to do the same before he before started towards the house.

It came into full view after he had gotten past the trees.

"Well, this place has seen better days," Michael commented from somewhere behind him.

"Definitely not as nice as I remember," Charlie agreed.

They all stopped on the cracked sidewalk for a minute, admiring the decrepit beauty.

It stood somewhat crooked behind the fog and overgrown grass, almost threatening in a way.

Though it shouldn't have been. It was just a house. A family's house that had been worn down by time.

Very, _very _worn.

The blue paint that covered the house had faded and chipped, revealing the old rotting wood underneath.

Many of the shingles on the roof had fallen off, leaving holes both large and small.

The shutters on the windows were either barely hanging on or had fallen off completely, exposing the dirty, partially broken glass.

Overgrown weeds crawled up the walls and into the holes that decorated them.

The front door wasn't in the frame.

Foxy inhaled sharply and turned around to look at his friends. "Are you guys ready?"

The entire group nodded and started making their way towards the house.

They went past the short metal fence, which was mostly fallen over.

They walked across the pathway, which was extremely cracked.

And then they found themselves in front of the porch.

Foxy was the first to set foot on it, looking down to make sure he didn't step on a spot that looked likely to cave in.

He stepped onto the front door, which was probably white at some point.

A very noticeable dark stain decorated the middle of it.

Blood.

Lovely.

It seemed to trail inside, but he could barely make out any of it once it hit the blue carpet. It was way too cluttered with dirt, trash, and various other things.

But it didn't take a genius to figure out where it was leading.

Everybody made a beeline for the shattered sliding glass door in the living room, which was visible from the hallway they had just set foot in.

The entire house seemed to groan as they walked through it.

The glass by the empty frame of the back door crunched beneath their shoes as they passed over it.

A rusted shed stood in the very corner of the backyard, partially hidden by the overgrown grass and weeds.

Charlie looked at Michael. "Do you want to open it?"

"Sure." He went straight over to the shed.

They all watched him as he tried to unlock it.

Foxy suddenly realized something. "Michael?"

"Yeah?"

"You said you figured out how to get into the shed, but you never told us what you found in it."

"Oh, I never found anything." Michael finished putting the combination in and pulled the lock off. "Didn't look that hard, though." The doors seemed to be a bit stuck and he struggled to wrestle them open. "And Dad used to spend _tons _of time in here, so there must be something special I that overlooked."

Everybody shined their flashlights into it all at once, not sure if something would be waiting for them or not.

All they were greeted with was what seemed like a normal shed full of tools and yard equipment.

The only thing that appeared out of the ordinary was the large bloody smear on the concrete floor. It looked as if someone had been dragged.

Well, they knew who.

The stain was largest by the lawnmower, which Michael had pointed out in one of the photos.

"You think there's like...some sort of hidden space in here or something?"

"There might be. Won't know until we poke around." Michael pushed the lawnmower aside and revealed what looked like a wooden hatch on the floor.

Well, that was easier than expected.

"Found a hatch." He grinned. "Who wants to open it?"

Foxy stepped forward. "I'll do it."

He crouched down in front of the hatch, careful to avoid touching the dried blood.

There were two rusty deadbolts holding the hatch closed.

He unlocked the deadbolts and threw open the hatch, which crashed rather loudly against the floor of the shed and sent up a cloud of dirt and dust.

Michael leaned over Foxy a bit, shining his flashlight down into the dark space.

"What do you see down there?" Ballora asked.

"Another hatch, I think."

"Yeah, but this one's metal. And there's a bunch of beams or something down there too."

"Should we—?"

A loud thud echoed from somewhere inside the house, ten times louder than it should have been thanks to how quiet the surrounding area was.

Everybody's heads snapped towards the direction of the sound.

"Do you guys see that?" Charlie whispered.

Foxy couldn't see anything. "See what?"

"The person standing in front of that upstairs window."

There, up in the furthest left upstairs window, was the outline of a person.

It was very hard to make out in the darkness. Foxy really had to strain his eyes.

But there was no denying it, that was a person up there.

They didn't seem to be doing anything. All they did was stare down at them.

Foxy had half a mind to shine his light up there so he could see who it was, but it seemed as if the person knew the exact moment that the thought crossed his mind.

They moved away from the window and out of sight.

"...Should we go in there and see who that is?" he asked after it seemed like nobody else was going to talk.

"I mean, we can't just ignore them, can we?"

Out of the corner of his eye, Foxy could see Michael grab a sledgehammer off of the pegboard next to him. "No, we can't," he said. "Come on."

One by one, everyone turned their flashlights off and started following Michael back into the house, keeping their eyes on those windows.


	16. A Familiar Face

Foxy felt a sharp chill upon reentering the house.

His eyes strained to investigate every dark shape in his path.

He didn't know if whoever they saw in the window was still upstairs or not.

Nobody dared to say anything in fear of missing any foreign sounds.

They passed through the living room.

And then the main hallway.

The landing of the stairs came into view.

It was just a couple of feet away.

Just a couple of feet.

Then suddenly, a sound echoed from somewhere behind them.

It came from back in the living room.

The sound was similar to a motor sparking to life, and it was followed by the crunch of somebody's boots on broken glass.

Everyone's heads turned.

They slowly made their way back, stopping just after they passed through the doorframe because they noticed something that they hadn't before.

There was a dark shape pressed up against the wall near the sliding glass door.

It was almost undeniably a person, presumably the same one from the widow.

Whoever they were, they didn't say anything. They just stood there and stared at all of them.

Foxy didn't dare to move.

He didn't dare to speak.

Or maybe he just couldn't get his vocal cords to function. It was hard to tell.

The shadowy figure took a deep, hoarse, rattling breath, which was just barely audible over the low rumbling of whatever that motor belonged to.

They took a few steps forward.

Everyone took the same amount of steps back, earning a bark-like laugh from the person. They seemed to find their apprehensiveness somewhat amusing.

Actually, that laugh sounded sorta familiar. It was quite a bit harsher and scratchier than Foxy remembered, but he still recognized it.

No, he must've heard it wrong.

There was no way.

Finally regaining his senses, Foxy pulled his flashlight out of his back pocket, turned it on, and pointed it straight at the person.

Any and all of the air in his lungs seemed to vanish.

There apparently _was _a way.

It was not Afton who stood in front of them.

It was not Elizabeth.

Foxy was almost sure that he was hallucinating at first.

"Riley?" His voice could not have sounded more unsure as he spoke.

"Did you miss me?" She laughed again, finding humor in their shocked faces.

A bit of raspiness lined her voice now, making it more reminiscent of her father's.

Even though her face was hidden behind a rather creepy, damaged, discolored clown mask, there was no denying that it was really her this time.

The source of that low rumbling appeared to be a rather large pincer that was strapped to one of her arms, its concave jaws lined with what appeared to be uneven rusty nails.

Various wires, cords, and machine parts were attached to other parts of her body.

"I've been looking forward to seeing you all again."

She continued taking slow, _agonizingly _slow steps towards them.

They continued to back away with each step she took.

It wasn't hard to pick up on the strange vibes she was giving off. _Especially _considering where they were standing, who they were looking for, and how she was supposed to be...y'know, _dead._

"It feels like it's been forever since I've seen your faces. Though sadly, I'm not here to be your friend. I've got orders to complete."

"What kind of orders?" Ballora asked nervously.

Riley tilted her head to the side a bit. "I need to get Mikey."

Everyone looked at Michael, who had an almost blank look on his face, the grip on the sledgehammer in his hands rather slack.

"Dad needs you so we can all be a family again."

He shook his head. "Not happening. No way in hell."

"You don't really have any say in what happens."

Charlie grabbed onto Foxy's shoulder and hissed into his ear, "Split."

"What?" He mimicked her tone, turning his gaze towards her for half a second.

"I'll take you by force if I have to." The pincer snapped open.

"We have to split. She can't chase all of us at once," Charlie explained.

"And as for the rest of you," Riley stopped for a moment, "I'll kill you so you can't tell anybody what happened."

She made a very sudden movement towards them.

The entire group split all at once, vanishing into different parts of the house.


	17. Friendly Advice

Anybody else would've flown straight out the front door and back to the car.

But they had come with the intent of finding Elizabeth and Afton, and that was what they were going to do. Even if they ran into...unexpected obstacles.

None of them had planned for Riley showing up. They hadn't really planned for much at all, actually. It was difficult to do that with Afton. He seemed to have the ability to pull the craziest shit out of nowhere.

Foxy still couldn't quite believe it. He _knew _that Afton had apparently survived death and brought his youngest son back to life, but he still couldn't believe that he had just encountered his friend, whose mangled corpse was on display in multiple photos that Elizabeth had left behind, still walking.

Riley had survived an encounter with one of her father's dangerous creations before. _Maybe, _somehow, someway, she had again, even though she definitely appeared to be dead in those photos.

But Elizabeth had said rather plainly that Riley _did _die.

Was she lying? She had obviously lied to them before, pretending to be somebody that she wasn't.

Maybe Afton had managed to reanimate another one of his kids.

Maybe the person Foxy had just encountered wasn't actually Riley, but instead an animatronic like Elizabeth.

He really didn't know.

He didn't know where she had gone.

He didn't know where _anybody _had gone.

He didn't even know if they had all managed to get away unscathed or not.

The whole house was alive with noise.

It groaned with every movement, the direction it was coming from completely indiscernible. That motor attached to Riley's pincer was still faintly audible. Loud crashes came and went every other second, screams occasionally following them.

Hopefully, nobody had been seriously hurt.

Currently, Foxy was hiding behind the kitchen counter, unsure if he should move.

He had the strong urge to get up and check on everybody else but didn't know if it was a good idea or not.

After all, they did split up for a reason.

And he wasn't sure what he'd do if he ran into Riley again.

"Riley's not dead - I think - and she's trying to kill us now. What I do?" he whispered to himself. "Maybe I could talk her out of killing us and taking Michael."

**"That will not help you."**

Foxy looked to his right and was greeted with a pair of eyes staring at him.

He jumped so hard that he smacked his head on an open drawer that was next to him.

Forcing his yelp into a hiss, Foxy rubbed the back of his head and frowned. "Miles, you scared the crap out of me! How did you even get in here?"

**"The same way I got into the warehouse. Remember, I go wherever Father goes."**

"Right, I forgot about that. What were you saying?"

**"Talking to her will not help," **Miles repeated.

"Then what do I do?" Foxy's frown deepened. "It is really her, isn't it?"

**"I can assure you that it is."**

Okay, it was her.

It was actually her.

Foxy inhaled sharply. "Alright, well, something's _clearly_ not right with her and it definitely Afton's fault. I don't know what he did to her, but I that know he's done something."

**"That much is obvious." **Miles shuddered, his broken and rusted joints rattling a bit. **"I have witnessed her being broken down and put back together. Trust me, attempting to converse with her will not help you."**

"How can we know before we try?"

**"I have tried many times to no avail. The person you knew is no longer there."**

"What is she is, though? What if you're wrong?"

**"Even if I am wrong, even if she actually is still buried somewhere deep, deep inside of the fog in her head, there is no way that any of you could help her out of it. And the people that can are far from being on your side."**

Foxy tried to find something to counter that with, but couldn't.

At a loss, all he could think to do was repeat his question from earlier. "Then what do I do?"

**"Kill her."**

Perhaps that suggestion wasn't too wild with all things considered, but that didn't stop Foxy from looking at Miles with wide eyes.

"I — there's no — are you crazy?!" he stammered, just barely managing to keep his voice low. "I can't do that! She's my—"

**"Friend, I know. But trust me, she would much rather be dead than be used as her father's puppet."**

No, he couldn't kill her.

He couldn't.

"I can't."

**"You have to if you want her to stop coming after you. And it would be doing her a favor."**

Would it?

No, it couldn't be.

Right?

Foxy felt as if he wasn't going to get a lot of time to think about this, which was making coming to a decision feel even more difficult. How long would it be before Riley finally found him? He had to come to some sort of decision.

He didn't want to kill her, but that meant he'd have to think of something else to do instead.

And he couldn't.

Miles seemed smart, and Riley had trusted him. Maybe he was right. Something told Foxy that his friend _would _probably rather be dead than used by Afton. It was difficult to miss the hatred and resentment in her voice whenever she spoke about him.

But what if there _was_ another way and he just couldn't see it?

What if he killed her when there was still a chance to snap her back? That would be terrible.

Plus, he wasn't actually sure if he could bring himself to do it.

"I—" Foxy sighed, attempting to get his breathing steady. "I don't want to hurt her."

**"She won't feel anything."**

When Foxy couldn't find anything to say in response, Miles kept going.

**"I've already spoken to the others about this**—**"**

"Are they okay?" he interrupted.

**"For the most part, yes."** Miles took a deep, painful sounding breath before continuing. **"As I was saying, I've already spoken to the others about this. You may take my advice or refuse it, but keep in mind that they might not feel the same way that you do."**

A particularly loud sound echoed throughout the house. It was followed by a short scream, and second, even louder sound.

**"I should go before Father notices that I'm gone."**

"Hey, wait a second—"

Miles vanished before Foxy got the chance to finish.

He sighed in frustration, gripping his flashlight absurdly tight.

There was a loud slam nearby and he jolted a slightly.

Heavy footsteps became audible.

Maybe it was just Freddy or Michael?

"Is someone in here?"

Nope, it was Riley.

Foxy pressed himself against the counter, holding his breath and praying to Scott that she'd just come in and leave.

She paused not long after entering.

There was still a lot of noise in other parts of the house, but she didn't seem to care.

She walked further into the kitchen, roughly knocking over a table that stood nearby.

"There's no need to hide. It'd be over quicker if you just come out."

Foxy flinched slightly as something glass broke.

Riley walked around a bit more.

And then, relative silence came.

It seemed as if she had left.

"Found ya, Fox."

Foxy felt his blood run cold.

The voice he heard was hardly above a whisper.

He looked up.

Riley was leaning over the counter, staring down at him.

She cocked her head to the side, laughing slightly at the look on his face.

Without saying anything, Foxy scrambled to his feet and bolted out of the kitchen.

He could hear her follow after him.

His shoulder slammed into the wall as he rounded the corner, causing him to stumble a bit.

The hallway was a mess. The debris and trash that covered the carpet was difficult to get through.

Riley was quickly catching up to him.

He tripped over a piece of plywood.

She was practically right on top of him.

He managed to turn around just in time to see that pincer spark to life again, snapping open with a loud clank.

"Riley, please—!" He pulled himself back just enough to avoid the pincer, which ended up hitting the floor instead. "Stop doing this!"

He pulled back again to avoid another strike.

"This isn't who you are at all!"

The pincer struck once more.

Foxy's back hit the door of the hall closet as he dodged the weapon yet again.

"You're right," Riley said.

Her free hand closed around Foxy's throat.

He tried to pry it off but found that he couldn't.

He was pulled back up to his feet.

And then, with a sharp increase in grip, he was lifted into the air.

The empty, dark eye sockets of Riley's mask stared straight through him.

"I'm exactly who I should've been."

She laughed as Foxy squirmed, attempting to pull off the metal talons that were continuing to close around his throat.

Scott, her grip was like iron.

The pincer snapped open once more.

There had to be a way to get her to let go.

There _had _to be.

It was slowly getting closer to his face.

He couldn't breathe.

He pulled at the leather straps on the underside of the metal glove encasing her entire forearm.

The nails were mere inches from his pale face.

The straps came undone and he pried the loose metal plates apart. A few wires came out as he did so.

It seemed as if Riley no longer had a real hand under there because her grip slackened entirely as the wires disconnected.

Foxy was dropped onto the floor.

Riley muttered a number of colorful words under her breath.

As much as he would've loved to collapse to the floor entirely and just lay there, there wasn't any time.

He forced himself to his feet before she could fix her jacked-up hand and ran down the hallway.

His hand found the crooked handrail of the staircase and he practically threw himself up to the second level.

Each stair felt as if it was going to give out beneath him.

All he knew was he needed somewhere to hide again.

He went into the first room he saw, which was rather small with faded pink walls. It was probably a child's room at some point.

Foxy was still trying to get oxygen into his lungs.

His hands were trembling.

His whole body was trembling, actually.

His eyes traveled around the dark room looking for something, _anything._

After a moment, he landed on something sticking out from underneath the moldy mattress in the corner.

_A sledgehammer. _Michael must've dropped it at some point.

Without even thinking, Foxy grabbed it and retreated to a corner that was next to the empty doorframe.

Maybe he should listen to Miles.

Or maybe not, he still felt wrong for even considering it.

He felt terrible.

He also looked terrible.

Foxy could tell; there was a grimy, cracked, floor-length mirror on the wall opposite of him.

His white t-shirt and converse were already filthy from being in the house. The knee of his jeans had a hole from when he fell earlier.

His sharp, angular features looked rather gaunt and tired in the moonlight that shone through the broken window.

Taking a deep breath, he gripped the sledgehammer tighter and clutched it closer to his chest.

Should he even use it?

Maybe he should try harder to snap Riley out of it.

Or maybe he should just listen to Miles.

"Fox? Where did you go?"

She knew that he had come up the stairs.

She was coming close to where he was hiding.

Foxy's heart started to pound even harder against his ribcage.

He was breathing _hard_.

_Loudly._

He had to come to some sort of decision.

Riley was _very _close now.

Foxy tried to quiet his shallow breathing, to grip the sledgehammer correctly in his trembling grip.

Her shadow started to appear in the doorway.

He tried to prepare himself, to shrug off his apprehensiveness and the guilt for what he was about to do.

He didn't want to do it.

He didn't want to.

He really didn't want to.

Riley's shadow fully entered the doorway.

And just as it did, Foxy stepped away from the wall and swung.


	18. Stricken

Foxy stepped away from the wall and swung.

He didn't think about where he was aiming at all. His eyes weren't even open.

Part of him was really hoping that he'd miss.

But he didn't.

The sledgehammer hit Riley.

It struck her right below her right eye.

As soon as it made contact, there was a resounding crack from her mask, which shattered, and a sickeningly wet thud from her face.

She nearly stumbled over, only managing to stay somewhat upright because the door frame was there to catch her.

Foxy became rooted to the spot.

Partially out of surprise that he didn't miss, and partially out of surprise that he had actually decided to try and hit her in the first place.

There was an instant stab of guilt through his chest.

But he tried to ignore it.

Riley was bent over, trying to recollect herself.

It'd be pretty easy to strike her once more, to go straight for the back of her head.

That would probably be all it took, right?

How many swings to the head did it take to kill somebody with a sledgehammer?

It couldn't have been a lot.

Foxy hoped it wasn't a lot.

He tried to once again get a firm grasp on the handle and to lift the weapon back up.

But he couldn't.

"Going to hit me again?" Riley asked.

She looked up at him, still partially bent over.

Her hair was a bit in the way, but Foxy could still see a decent amount of her heavily scarred face.

"I, uh..."

"Do it."

One of those half-smiles grazed her lips.

"Do it," she repeated. "I want you to."

There was a slight dent where the hammer had struck her face. And her right eye, which was slowly becoming tinged red with blood, appeared somewhat sunken in.

"Don't half-ass the job, Fox."

Foxy brought the hammer back over his shoulder.

He raised it back up.

Riley stared at him expectantly with her dull, lifeless eyes.

He swung downward.

And then, at the last second, he swerved to the right so that he missed and hit the floor instead.

What was wrong with him?

He had already done it once. All he had to do was do it again.

"I can't," Foxy choked out.

She laughed at him, "Aw, that's disappointing. Can't ever do anything to save yourself, can you? Even when it _couldn't _be easier." She stood back up fully, cracking her neck. "But I'm not surprised."

She slowly started advancing towards him.

There was a loud pounding coming from somewhere down below them, but Foxy could barely hear it over the sound of his heart pounding in his ears.

Riley roughly shoved him into the wall.

She caught him by the throat again.

Foxy attempted to do what he had done last time to escape.

Unfortunately, he found that the leather straps were now pulled ridiculously tight and knotted.

His trembling fingers couldn't undo them.

"Crap."

The pounding started to become much louder.

He tried kicking her.

That didn't do much.

Those rusty nails started to press against his face with slow pressure.

He wanted to scream, but his voice seemed to have left him.

The pain was worse than he expected.

She was definitely drawing blood now.

"Foxy!"

A tall figure flung themselves through the doorway and smashed something over Riley's head - it looked like a bit of plywood.

She cursed loudly, releasing Foxy only because the blow had knocked her slightly off balance.

He felt a sudden, sharp, stinging pain as the nails on the pincer got dragged down the sides of his face a bit, and then across his forearm, leaving multiple jagged cuts.

He didn't even react. He just sorta sunk down onto the floor and sat there.

He could see Micahel standing there, grabbing his sister around the neck with both arms. He craned her neck back and shouted, "Now!"

Freddy, Charlie, and Ballora came into the room and started pulling at Riley's mechanical parts.

"What're you doing?!" she growled.

First, the hand came off.

And then part of the pincer.

Ballora picked up the wood that Michael had thrown to the ground earlier and clocked Riley straight in the face.

She stopped struggling after that.

Michael gently laid her down on the floor.

"Are you okay?" Ballora asked Foxy.

He spent another minute getting oxygen back into his lungs before responding. "Where were you guys?!" he hissed. "Did you not hear any of what was going on?"

"We'll explain in a second. Let's just get out of here before she gets up again." Charlie grabbed onto Foxy's uninjured arm and pulled him back up.

Riley was _already _starting to stir again.

What did Afton do to her?


	19. Descending

Foxy didn't know how much head trauma someone could possibly continue to get back up from, but he did know that he could hear Riley following after them once they were halfway down the stairs.

"C'mon, faster!" Charlie whispered in his ear.

They turned into the hallway next to the staircase.

Foxy could spot a door ajar that he hadn't seen earlier, one that apparently led to a basement.

Michael ushered them all down the concrete steps.

He followed them in and hastily shut the door once everybody was in.

Riley passed by, sounding somewhat clumsy since she was probably still disoriented from being hit over the head multiple times.

Loud crashes echoed from nearby rooms.

She didn't know where they had gone.

They all breathed a sigh of relief.

"Keep going," Michael whispered.

Everybody did as directed, automatically retreating into a far corner behind a stack of moldy boxes.

It seemed to Foxy that they had all been down in the basement before.

He decided to speak once everybody was sat down, keeping his voice incredibly low. "So what happened to you guys?"

"She found Freddy first," Charlie started.

"I-I'm not very g-g-good at hiding."

"He started running and she started throwing stuff at him. He got chased into the office where _I _was hiding and got clocked in the head with...well, something. I didn't see what it was." The brunette pointed to the blood trailing from Freddy's hairline. "He fell and she took that opportunity to try and kill him. And I mean, I couldn't just sit there and watch so I popped out."

"Charlie h-hit her in the shoulder w-with a p-picture frame."

"That distracted her for about two seconds."

Charlie then went on to describe a fight that went on in the office, which ended with Freddy getting a bunch of nails in his right hand before she got the both of them out.

Foxy then noticed that Freddy's hand was wrapped in green fabric that looked like it came from Charlie's jacket.

"Then they came into the bedroom where _we _were," Ballora said, gesturing to herself and Michael.

Miles popped up and had his talk with Ballora, Charlie, Michael, and Freddy all at once. Riley cornered them in that room not long after.

"I swung the sledgehammer," Michael said. "It hit that pincer she had strapped to her arm."

Riley apparently hit him back, nearly breaking his nose.

They escaped afterward and Michael shoved them all into the basement so that they could catch their breath.

"Guess she must've found you after that," he said. "Where were you?"

"The kitchen."

Foxy detailed what he had gone through while they were all absent.

"We heard you in the hallway," Ballora admitted.

"Then why didn't you come out?"

"It went quiet for a few minutes and we were waiting for more noise to figure out what was happening."

That few minutes of quiet was when Foxy was being strangled.

"The next thing we h-heard was the two of y-you stomping up the stairs."

"_That's _when we went to follow after you, but the stupid basement door jammed when we tried to leave. Had to ram into the damn thing about twenty times before it opened."

Well, that explained all the pounding Foxy heard.

Nobody said anything after that. They all just sat there and listened to Riley wreck the house above them.

It went on for another seven minutes.

And then, abruptly, it stopped.

The whole house went dead silent.

"You hear that?" Charlie asked. "Nothing."

"You think she left or something?"

"Don't know."

Slowly, Charlie crept up the stairs and opened the door a bit, looking around.

She came back down a few steps.

"I don't see her. Should we make a break for the shed?"

They all agreed to do that.

Not wasting any more time, the gang hurried their way up the basement stairs, through the sliding glass door, across the grass, and back to the shed.

The first hatch was still open.

"Alright," Michael started, "who wants to see what's down in that second hatch?"

"I'll look," Foxy volunteered.

Miles had sorta hinted that Afton was indeed nearby and Foxy was so ready to find him and kick the shit out of him. Even more so after the hell he had just experienced at the hands of somebody he really cared about. Somebody who would have never done those things without his involvement.

He sat down the edge of the hatch's opening and let his legs dangle.

"Here's a flashlight." Michael handed him his flashlight.

"Thanks." Foxy tried to flash him an appreciative smile, but it probably looked more like a grimace.

He took a deep breath and dropped down with the slightest bit of hesitance.

The entirety of the surface he landed on shook once he made contact with it.

It was rather startling.

Foxy waited for everything to settle down before turning on the flashlight to investigate.

First, he glanced back up to where he had dropped from.

Everybody was crowded around the hole looking down at him.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, Bal, I'm good."

The drop was a lot bigger than he had realized.

A couple of metal bars crossed the length of most of the space.

Some sort of cable and pulley system stretched up from the gap in between them.

It almost looked like he was on top of...no. No way. There was no fucking way Afton had one of those beneath his shed.

But they wouldn't know for sure until the second hatch was open.

Foxy tugged on the lock that held it closed.

It was old, but it certainly wasn't going to budge by brute force alone.

"Um," he looked back up at his friends, "I need something to get this lock off."

"Hold on," Michael disappeared out of his view.

A bit of noise followed.

He returned moments later, passing something down to Foxy.

"Bolt cutters," he said. "They were hanging on the tool board."

Convenient.

Foxy had never used bolt cutters before, but they weren't exactly difficult to figure out.

What _was _difficult was summoning enough strength to actually break the lock with them.

But eventually, he managed.

He swung the second hatch open and shined his flashlight into the opening.

It looked like the interior of an elevator down there.

He was on top of a _fucking _elevator underneath some guy's shed.

"Wh-what's d-down there?"

"I think it's an elevator."

"Are you serious?"

"Yeah, I've seen elevators before and this is definitely one of them." Foxy dropped down into the second hatch. "Come on down."

Ballora knitted her eyebrows together. "Should we?"

Michael shrugged. "Don't know how else we'll get to wherever it leads."

Without another word, he dropped into the elevator.

Charlie went next, followed by Freddy and Ballora.

The entire elevator shuddered every time somebody landed.

It, like the house, was dirty and old looking.

"Let's see if this junk still works." There was only one button, which was an obnoxious shade of red. Michael smacked it with his fist.

The lights flickered on rather pathetically. The entire thing shuddered again before it slowly started to move.

Nobody spoke during the ride down, which was much longer than anybody would have preferred.

The elevator dinged when they reached the very bottom.

The doors tried to open but got stuck about halfway.

Freddy and Ballora pried them open the rest of the way.

A long, gray, dimly lit hallway with an open door on the opposite end stood before them.

Somebody was casually leaning against the doorframe.

Foxy wasted no time in shining Michael's light at them. "Elizabeth," he greeted with a hint of irritation.

She grinned at them, that long cut still across her face. "You all look like absolute shit."

Foxy decided to ignore that comment. "Where's Afton?"

"You really think that I'm going to tell you? That's cute."

"Tell us," Michael pressed.

She pretended to think for a moment. "No."

And then she slammed the door in their faces without another word.


	20. Doors

"Well, that was rude." Ballora frowned.

"Yeah, a little bit." Foxy made his way over to the door and pushed it open.

He was greeted with a small room littered with mildew-covered boxes that were all pushed up against the walls.

Unsurprisingly, Elizabeth was no longer in sight.

He quickly pushed past the door on the opposite end of the room, not caring to give the boxes further investigation.

There were seven more doors in front of him, all of which lined the walls of a hallway that was equally as dark as the one they had just stood in moments before.

"Should we split up again?"

"I don't know, being apart wasn't exactly beneficial to us a few minutes ago."

"Yeah, but it might take forever to search this place if we don't, Bal," Foxy argued.

"Then we'll split into groups," Michael said.

Perhaps there should have been more discussion, but there wasn't.

And the next thing Foxy knew, he and Michael were going through one of the doors together.

The faded sign next to the door had read, 's_torage', _which certainly wasn't a lie.

The room was full of rows, and rows, and rows of shelves that were shrouded in darkness.

How much robotic junk can one man have?

Foxy decided to take the lead, being the first one to step into the large room.

Nothing seemed too suspicious. Well, all things considered, anyway.

A few limbs stuck out from shelves here or there, but it was clear they were just discarded parts that weren't properly packed away.

The sound of their shoes hitting the concrete was magnified in the echoey room.

Foxy stopped abruptly, causing Michael to nearly bump into him.

"Something wrong?"

Foxy peered into the gap between a couple of boxes on a shelf right next to him.

It appeared that the only thing on the other side was more shelves. And boxes.

"No, I just thought...nevermind." He was almost positive that he had heard something, but, in actuality, he had probably just imagined it. After all, the echo was making everything a bit muddled and confusing.

He continued forward.

And then, a few seconds later, he stopped again.

He was definitely hearing something.

It was a third pair of footsteps that did not belong to either of them, but were very close in rhythm to Michael's. Almost as if they were trying to hide behind the sound.

Foxy turned around.

There was nobody behind them.

Michael was squinting because of the light being shined directly into his face. "You sure there's not a problem?"

"I definitely just heard somebody walking."

"Yeah?"

Foxy turned back around to better investigate the room.

Maybe they weren't that close to them?

"Yeah, did you not hear it?"

He received no response.

"Michael?"

There was a clank, which was followed by multiple quick footsteps.

Foxy whipped back around.

Michael was gone, his flashlight rolling in a half-circle on the floor.

Well, that certainly wasn't good.

"Michael?" Foxy repeated nervously.

There was _no _way that he could've gone far.

It just wasn't possible.

But there really didn't seem to be anybody nearby.

No Michael, no...whoever that was.

Foxy looked down.

He could spot a muddy bootprint poking out from between a large gap between two shelves.

It was bigger than his shoes by a decent amount.

He made his way through the gap, searching for more bootprints.

Sure enough, there were quite a few.

They led from a door - one narrower than doors usually were -in between another set of shelves, to where Foxy had seen the first print, and back to the door.

He took note of how there was a lot more space in between the bootprints after they turned back toward the door.

He followed, forcing the small door open with a bit of a struggle.

_Another _hallway with like, ten doors.

Great.

Foxy followed the prints as far as he could, but they soon grew faint, disappearing completely before getting close to any of the doors.

Now what?

He looked around a bit more.

There was a large opening in the wall that appeared to have some sort of dirt passage.

It seemed that that was where the footprints first came from.

Maybe whoever took Michael went back through the passage.

Foxy shined his light into the gap. He couldn't quite tell where it led to.

He stepped in.

The dirt floor sunk in a good few inches under his weight.

He went a bit further in, questioning whether or not this was really the direction he should be going in.

And moments later, those thoughts were cut short by another fun noise.

A few different noises, actually.

A wet thud, something hitting the floor, very noisy footsteps, and then a loud slam.

Foxy had already backed out of the opening by the time the second noise came, so he had managed to gage the general direction of the slam.

It came from somewhere near the far end of the hallway.

Upon closer inspection of that area, it appeared that one of the doors was not closed fully.

Slowly, Foxy reached out and pushed it open.

Immediately, he was reminded of that small space from the old Fazbear's, the one crammed full of old, musty, robotic animals.

He walked a bit further in.

He checked the floor again, silently hoping for another clue of some sort.

To his surprise, there was one. A small bit of blood was right in front of his feet. Unlike the blood he had seen in the shed, it was still fresh.

He wasn't sure if he wanted it to be Michael's blood or not. On one hand, that would mean he really was on his trail. On the other hand, that would mean he had been injured again.

A rotting door stood opposite of where he was.

The source of the slam, perhaps?

Foxy headed even further into the room, feeling a bit wary of the dark shapes crowding the walls.

A crunch sounded from somewhere near him.

It was like glass being stepped on.

He whipped around, stepping back as he scanned over the room with his flashlight.

He stopped as he backed into something, flinching slightly.

Spinning around yet again, Foxy was greeted with something suspended from the ceiling by a load of chains, which rattled loudly when he bumped into it.

It wasn't until he brought his flashlight up that he actually realized what it was.

_The wolf._

It appeared to be completely undamaged, fitted with a brand new rubbery covering and everything. Without the illusion disc turned on, it looked like a garish Halloween prop.

Foxy instinctively backed away from it.

Not that it was likely to do anything to him, considering that it wasn't powered on.

"Quite the beauty, isn't he?"


	21. Helpless

Foxy turned back around, not all that surprised to see Elizabeth stalking out of the shadows, removing herself from the tangles of deactivated machinery that she had been hiding in.

He shot her the dirtiest look he could muster.

She simply laughed at it, twirling that small pushbutton knife between her fingers as she crossed the floor toward him.

Perhaps he hadn't noticed during the stabbing incident because he was so caught up on what was being said, but Elizabeth's movements were much more mechanical with the illusion disc gone. What was once very fluid and human-like had become extremely jerky and artificial.

"Is that the look you give all of your friends when you see them?"

Foxy stepped back a bit more as she got closer, biting back whatever comment was forming in his head about her not being his friend.

There were more important things to focus on at the moment.

"What did you do to Michael?"

Elizabeth gave an odd grin. Foxy couldn't tell if it looked artificial because she was a machine, or because she was forcing it.

"What did _I _do? I haven't done anything to him. Not yet, anyway. I don't usually do the abducting. That's more for his kind," she gestured vaguely to wolf animatronic before stopping right in front of Foxy, "and her."

Foxy was suddenly rooted to the spot, despite being ready to run moments before.

"Her?" he repeated stupidly, already knowing who she was referring to.

Elizabeth's grin widened. "Yes, her."

The next few seconds seemed to happen very quickly and Foxy didn't have enough time to snap himself out of it.

Elizabeth was much faster than she appeared to be and the next thing he knew, the stained blade of the knife was close to his face and her arm was around his throat, pinning him against her.

He started struggling in her grip, but couldn't get Elizabeth's cold metal arm to budge even an inch.

Her slightly tinny voice was _right_ next to his ear, sending an unpleasant chill down his spine. "You've already seen her, haven't you?"

He could feel the blade being lightly dragged across one of the cuts the nails had left earlier.

"That encounter is what these are from, correct?"

Foxy tried to pull away, but he didn't have a lot of room to squirm.

"You know," it was difficult to talk with how much pressure she was placing on his throat, "you lied to me earlier. You said she was dead. You said you saw that _thing_ drag her back."

"Oh, that wasn't a lie. I did watch it drag her in. And make no mistake, she was dead. I thought you would've figured that out since you've already met Miles, but I guess not."

The grip on his neck got a little tighter.

Elizabeth got a little closer to his ear.

"Not everything that dies stays dead. Though, I do suppose your friend _is _still technically gone. Not really acting like herself, is she?"

"What did you _do _to her?" Foxy was getting derailed from finding out what happened to Michael pretty easily and he didn't even realize.

"Well, you see, Miles knows to play along so that he can keep his sanity. But she couldn't do the same. So much hatred in her, there is. It was _really_ difficult to get her to cooperate."

She turned around and Foxy was forced to turn as well.

"See that animatronic?" she whispered, pointing her knife at a clown half-illuminated by Foxy's fallen flashlight.

It was sat slumped against the wall, leaning to one side as if it was about to fall over.

Its faceplates were arranged in the same way that Elizabeth's were, but some of them were dented and barely hanging on.

The rest of the body was decorated with dents too, but they weren't as noticeable as the large cavity in the middle of its stomach, which made it appear as if it had been gutted. The paint on the metal around the cavity was very discolored. By the looks of it, it was discolored by something that had splattered onto it long ago.

Elizabeth didn't wait for Foxy to respond.

"That's the one that caused the accident all those years ago. You should've seen her when she first came across it here during the early testing stages. Made all of those dents in it, she did. It was quite funny, actually."

Foxy couldn't imagine how it would be funny.

"In the end, attempting to drill fact into her head was not enough. Well, it could have been with enough time. But why waste time with that when there's a faster, more reliable method?"

He was about to ask what that _meant _exactly but ended up being cut short by the sound of a door slamming open.

"Freddy, don't slam the doors open like that!"

"S-s-sorry!"

"Wait, guys, we've already been here before."

Foxy wasted no time in screaming before Elizabeth could quiet him.

"Oh, you're such a killjoy, Fox."

Ballora, Freddy, and Charlie came running into the room.

Elizabeth made no effort to drag Foxy away or to stick the knife straight into his neck. She remained in the exact same position.

Foxy couldn't quite see his friends properly with three flashlights shining straight at his face, but he could tell that it was Charlie that walked the closest.

"Let him go."

"I could let him go, but that's no fun. Besides, it's not like I'm the one that has to deal with you three." Elizabeth turned slightly towards the closed, rotting door behind her. "Canner! Get back out here!"

The door slammed open and Riley clambered out.

Foxy could see dry mud caked onto her boots and a fresh spray of blood across her mask (which was now loosely held together with a couple of strips of duct tape).

She apparently needed no instruction, since she started wordlessly making her way towards the group of three, who hesitantly began to inch their way back to the entrance.

Foxy would have _loved _to ask them to not leave him alone again with Elizabeth, but he felt as if he shouldn't.

Riley would probably rip them to shreds and Elizabeth could kill him whenever she wanted to.

"Go!"

"What about you?" Charlie asked.

"I'll — I'll be fine!"

At least he was _hoping _that he would be.

Elizabeth made some sort of sound, as if she found that amusing.

He'd live, right?

They all continued to hang by the door, giving Foxy weird looks.

"Go!" he repeated.

After another short moment of hesitance, the three bolted back into the hall and Riley chased after them.

"Might as well let the mutt get some exercise too."

Elizabeth dragged Foxy closer to where the wolf hung, using the arm that wasn't holding him captive to flick a series of switches.

A loud growl echoed throughout the room.

"Kill our unwelcome guests."

He couldn't quite see the thing from the position he was in, but he could hear it wildly thrashing about in the chains that held it up.

It snapped them eventually, hitting the floor with a loud thud before it scrambled out of the room to follow after all of the noise.

A loud scream rang throughout the space, likely belonging to Freddy.

"Ohh, think one of them got Fred?"

"No."

"Are you sure? That scream was _awfully _loud."

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure," Foxy replied stubbornly.

Elizabeth chuckled, "Alright, well, now that we're alone again, I say we go pay Father a visit."

Foxy made a funny choking sound, and not because he was practically being strangled.

"What? You wanted to see him, didn't you? Let's go see him."

He was dragged to the door, that rotting door, which was still half-open.

Elizabeth kicked it open the rest of the way.

An extremely narrow passage greeted them, lined with various pipes.

There was no way that they would be able to pass through in their current position, so Elizabeth finally had to let go of Foxy.

He was given no opportunity to escape, though. She was quick to shove him into the passage.

It felt really claustrophobic.

"Go on," she said. "Get moving."

It was impossible to move through very quickly, but that didn't stop Elizabeth from occasionally prodding him in the arm with the knife or shoving him a bit, telling him to go faster or to stop breathing so hard because it was annoying.

He received a particularly hard shove once they reached the end of the passage, one that knocked him to the floor.

"Get up." Elizabeth picked him up by the back of his shirt and he attempted to wrench free of her grasp once more.

He was unsuccessful.

The animatronic's grip was like iron.

And soon after he was back on his feet, she twisted Foxy's arms painfully behind his back.

"This way."

He was forced toward an unfinished wall with a large opening in it.

Despite his eagerness earlier, Foxy was now trying very hard to not move.

The slick floor gave him little traction, though. His shoes slid across it despite his best efforts.

"I hope that you realize what you're doing isn't very effective."

"Shut up."

His stupid, childish response earned an amused smile.

"Oh, please don't say that. It cuts me deeply." She swung him to the left, leading him towards yet another hallway. "Through here. Go faster."


	22. The Dead Man

"You know, you seemed super eager to keep us away from Afton when we arrived. What changed?"

"_You _seemed eager to see him when you arrived. What changed?"

Foxy huffed, "Don't respond to my question with a question."

"Why not?" There was a notable hint of amusement in Elizabeth's voice that hadn't left yet. "I think it's an equally valid question. Why don't you want to see Father anymore? Is the little fox scared?"

"No, I just think it's really suspicious that you changed your mind all of a sudden."

Foxy was forced to round another corner.

"My mind never changed. I think you forget that most of what I say and do has a high likelihood of not being genuine, or just being an attempt to mislead you."

Suddenly, they stopped. They stopped in front of another closed, rotting door.

Elizabeth got close to his ear, sending another unpleasant chill down his spine.

"We're here," she whispered. "Try to behave yourself."

She then proceeded to very loudly kick the door open.

The room that greeted them looked highly unpleasant.

A wheeled metal table stood somewhat close to the doorway. Four pairs of handcuffs were dangling off of the metal crossbar that connected the legs, two on each side. Red smears covered the surface.

Rusty chains and manacles hung from one wall, and rusty tools (some medical and some not) were hung on the opposite one.

A few more tables and small chairs were strewn around the rest of the room. It looked as if one of the chairs was occupied, but Foxy could not make out who was in it. They were out of range of the few small lights in the ceiling.

The air was sickly sweet, as if something, or _someone_ was rotting nearby.

"For Scott's sake, be more careful with that door will you?" A tall figure clad in a nasty, molting, green-ish yellow rabbit suit emerged from one of the darkest parts of the room.

It was William Afton, somehow appearing more unpleasant than before.

The rotting smell grew stronger as he got closer.

"Sorry, Father," Elizabeth said. "I brought a guest with me."

"Well, what are you waiting for? Don't be rude, grab him a seat."

Afton turned on another light as Elizabeth sat Foxy down on one of the multiple chairs in the room, illuminating the other seated individual.

Foxy nearly jumped up but was cut short by Elizabeth forcing him back down.

"Michael!"

He was tied to a chair with old chains, looking quite ready to pass out, his curly hair stuck to his forehead with sweat and blood.

"Now, now, no need to get up. Michael and I were just doing a little catching up before you arrived. He's fine."

Foxy could've easily argued with that statement. "Fine". What was his definition of "fine" exactly?

Michael tried to say something, but nobody could understand him because he had a strip of duct tape over his mouth.

"It's been such a long time since we've seen one another. We have a lot to discuss. A lot of bonding to do." With his final sentence, Afton took a rather large saw off of the wall and sat it down on the table that was closet to his oldest son.

Foxy wanted to try and say something, but he didn't really know what.

He wanted to spit out all of the resentment and hatred that he had gained towards William Afton in the short time he had gotten to know him, but it was all caught in his throat.

Why did he always have to lose his ability to function properly when it mattered most? Why couldn't he even be brave enough to tell Afton to eat shit and die again like he _really_ wanted to?

The door behind Foxy slammed open once again and his entire body jolted.

The low rumbling and sound of somebody with a high-ish, raspy voice struggling about told him that it was Charlie and Riley before he could even see either of them.

Afton grinned widely behind his mascot head, clapping his hands together. "Oh, you're back again. Very nicely done. Drag her in here."

There was a bit of joy in his tone, which sounded quite wrong.

Riley stalked past Foxy and Elizabeth, dragging Charlie behind her. Her pincer was clamped down on the brunette's leg, and she was desperately struggling to get it off with her one good arm.

"Let me go!"

As if she was actually listening to her (Foxy doubted that she was), Riley let go, leaving Charlie on the floor in the middle of the room.

Riley placed her muddied boot on her chest before she could even try to get up, effectively keeping her in place.

"Oh, don't you worry about keeping her there, the robot can deal with her."

She stepped back a bit, removing her foot.

Elizabeth's grip got painfully tight on Foxy's shoulder.

Afton's voice dropped its joyful note once he started speaking to Elizabeth, not even bothering to look at her. "What are you waiting for? Don't just stand there, be useful and seat her too."

The animatronic dipped her head down as she wordlessly walked over. She picked Charlie up by the back of her jacket and roughly placed her in a chair a bit behind Foxy, allowing it to loudly scrape against the floor as she pushed it next to his.

Charlie also tried to stand up (using her good leg), but Elizabeth caught her around the neck with her arm and forced her back, keeping her there.

"I would remain in that seat if I were you. You'll end up like your brother in the blink of an eye if you don't."

Foxy could see Charlie's entire body tense out of the corner of his eye. He couldn't tell if it was out of anger or fear.

"Fun fact, actually," the murderer signaled for Riley to stay for a minute, "I thought I had picked you off earlier...had finally gotten you out of my hair once for all. But no, it turns out that there just so happens to be quite a few women who look as plain as you do."

"Eat shit and die, Afton," Charlie hissed.

He ignored her, continuing to speak. "And now you're being a nuisance again. Alongside you," he threw a glance a Foxy, "and the other two idiots. Mask off."

After being quite confused for a half a second, Foxy realized that the last sentence was directed at what was left of his best friend.

Riley pushed her tape covered mask up her face, the injuries caused by Foxy's attempt to take her down looking neither better nor worse.

He quickly looked away, the floor becoming very interesting all of a sudden.

Afton tutted, "Quite cruel to the people you call friends, aren't you?"

"I didn't want to hurt her!" Foxy sputtered out defensively.

Really, he didn't. He couldn't even find it in himself to finish the job when Miles told him she'd prefer death over being in her father's control. Even when he knew that himself.

And _he_ wasn't the one that sent out metal monsters to hunt her down and maul her. He wasn't the one to forcefully turn her to his side, to turn her into a drone who lived to do his bidding.

It was Afton. Afton did that.

Imagine intentionally causing the death of your own daughter and then dragging her back so that you can break her down. Imagine pulling the plug on your youngest son and plunging him into eternal, undead misery. Imagine doing those things and then calling someone else cruel.

"But you did. You showed up at _my_ house and started causing a scene. I didn't _want _you all to come here, really. I don't understand why you all won't just leave me alone. All I'm trying to do is reunite with my family."

"They don't want to reunite with you, Afton. They don't like you. They know you're a monster and don't want anything to do with you!" Charlie leaned forward in her seat, only to be roughly pulled back again by Elizabeth.

"Don't say that. They do love me."

Foxy forced himself to look up again, only so he could reaffirm in his mind how ridiculous that sounded.

Michael was continuing to struggle in his chair, attempting to desperately get out of the chains that kept him seated.

Riley's face could not look less blank as Afton fixed some of the cables that had come loose from the back of her neck. The viciousness that she had shown them all in the house had melted away and nothing was left in its place. Her eyes were so glazed over that it seemed as if she wasn't actually aware of anything going that was going on around her anymore.

"They only love you if you brainwash them."

"Untrue." The killer handed a rag to Riley. "Wipe the blood off of your face and then go find what's left for me."

The redhead complied, mopping her face off before making her way back out of the room.

"It is true, I mean look at her!" Charlie nodded in the direction that Riley had gone in. "She's basically a zombie, and Michael looks like he'd rather be anywhere else!"

"No, he wouldn't," Afton stated all matter-of-factly. "You're wrong, Charlotte. And if you continue to argue with me I'll make sure your death comes first." He stood in front of all of those tools on the wall, seemingly trying to decide on a weapon. "Actually, I think I will kill you first. This conversation is more grating than I was anticipating it to be. Plus, I imagine that finally taking your life will be quite...freeing."

Charlie gave Foxy a _'we're gonna have to do something soon. As in, right now' _look.

And all that did was fill him with a much stronger sense of dread.

Afton took an axe off the wall and started to approach them.

They had to do something soon. Charlie was right. Something. Anything.

Sure, things could go wrong. But it was either try something or sit there and accept death, right?

Foxy tried to will his body to move. He had to stop freezing up for once.

For _once_.

He couldn't let Afton win. Not after all he had done, both to people he cared about and people he didn't know.

For whatever reason, Elizabeth seemed to loosen her grip on his shoulder.

Charlie squirmed about uncomfortably as Afton got extremely close to her face, his bloodshot, lifeless eyes staring straight into hers from behind the dark eyeholes of his mask.

"This will probably be rather painful, but that's okay. You may not have fun, but I will. When you are dead, and I am done reveling in the satisfaction of that," Afton let the flat side of the axe touch her face, causing her to jerk her head as far away as she could, "I will step over your lifeless corpse and murder _him_."

His gaze caught Foxy's for a brief moment.

The sound of Michael struggling in his seat was becoming much louder.

"And soon after that, once the rest arrive, the floor will be _covered _in bodies and I will be very happy."

Suddenly, Michael's chair tipped over and one of the arms broke, freeing his hand.

Afton turned his head.

The very moment that he did, without thinking, Foxy tore Elizabeth's hand off of his shoulder and lunged at the undead killer in front of him.


	23. Breakdown

Afton turned back around at the sound of Foxy's chair scraping against the floor but had no time to react before their bodies made contact.

They both hit the floor.

The dead, bloodshot eyes within the large carved eyeholes of the mascot head were wide with surprise and maybe, _maybe_, a bit of fear.

This was clearly one of the first times that he didn't have the upper hand on his victims-to-be.

The fur of the costume was slick and greasy. It was difficult to get a grip on and Afton was trying very hard to push him off.

Foxy hooked his fingers into one of the many holes in the costume.

He tuned out everything else around him as he started to shake him as hard as humanly possible.

The only thing he could hear was Afton sputtering out disjointed sentences and the sound of his body repeatedly making contact with the floor.

It felt like forever, but it probably wasn't all that long before Foxy was pulled off of him by his underarms.

Judging by the feeling of absolutely frigid metal that was creeping through his shirt, it was Elizabeth that had picked him up.

"Put him somewhere!" Afton sputtered out.

Foxy thrashed about wildly as the animatronic carried him out of the room.

She kicked open the first available door, bringing him into a small cluttered room with a shelf in the middle.

He was dumped rather unceremoniously onto the concrete floor.

"Stay here, will you?"

Foxy, despite his body's protest, forced himself back up before Elizabeth could leave and lock him in.

He lunged once again, latching onto her back.

Something fell to the floor with a clatter.

To his genuine surprise, Elizabeth actually had a bit of difficulty getting him off.

Foxy made contact with the floor once more.

"I'm not going to let you lock me in here!"

"What are you going to do to stop me?"

"I'll—" Foxy's eyes were drawn to something that was laying on the floor in front of him.

_The knife._

Elizabeth must've dropped it.

He quickly grabbed it, fumbling with it for a moment before the blade popped out.

"I'll fight you!"

She laughed. "Yes, I'm sure that will end well for you."

"I'm serious!" He stood back up, pointing the blade straight at her.

Appearing quite unfazed, Elizabeth slowly pushed the door closed.

"Alright, if you insist. I wasn't planning on doing anything too horrible to you, but perhaps that is the only way to get you to cooperate."

Foxy stepped back when she got a bit closer.

"You know, as I fled from your home and into the woods there was a single thought ringing in the back of my head. '_Maybe they aren't all that bad. Stupid and misguided, sure. But not that bad'._ Well, aside from that Charlotte girl, anyway."

She took another step toward him.

Foxy did not back away. He gripped the knife tighter and stood his ground.

"But now, after all of your insistent and obnoxious meddling, I can say with full confidence that I was wrong."

Elizabeth moved to strangle him.

Foxy blinded stabbed with the knife just as the frigid metal of her hands made contact with his neck.

By some miracle of Scott, it didn't just add another scratch to the paint on her face. No, It sunk straight into the small gap that her faceplates created between her eyes.

He had done it. He, to his surprise, had actually managed to do something.

Elizabeth pulled back a bit, also surprised.

Some sort of blue liquid began to drip from where the knife stuck out.

Hydraulic fluid maybe?

One of her eyelids stopped working.

"Alright, that was a bit rude." Elizabeth's voice remained even and cold as she reached up and pulled the blade out, causing the fluid to spurt out and splatter all across her stark white face.

"And trying to strangle somebody isn't?" Foxy asked, his voice cracking for what felt like the forty-fifth time.

He was left with no option but to start backing away as Elizabeth began to get closer.

She was once again the one with the sharp object, and he had nothing.

With how little room to walk there was, they both soon found themselves circling around the shelf in the center of the room.

"I don't quite understand your insistence on seeking us out. We would have never tried to hurt you if you hadn't tried to seek us out."

Elizabeth didn't even bother to try and change her direction or anything, she just kept advancing towards him, moving about as fast as an antagonist from an eighties slasher film.

"Everything that has happened during this night was due to _your_ choice to come here. Your injuries, your friends' injuries, the giant dent in the Canner's face. She is a lost cause, and to your knowledge before coming here, was buried beneath the burnt rubble of Father's warehouse, so I'm not quite sure why you all decided to try to finish this stupid quest she dragged you into."

Foxy had _multiple _opportunities to make a break for the door with how many loops they had done around the shelf. But for whatever reason, he had decided that he wasn't going to run from this fight, despite how disadvantaged he may have been.

Maybe there was something hidden within the room's clutter that could be useful to him?

Foxy grabbed an empty milk crate and chucked it.

Elizabeth let it bounce uselessly off of her shoulder.

"She never dragged us into it. We _volunteered,_ we wanted to stop Afton from hurting more people."

He picked up a metal folding chair and threw that too.

It knocked one of Elizabeth's faceplates loose, leaving it misaligned.

"Well that's quite stupid, isn't it? Surely, somebody, _anybody _else would be better suited for this than you all."

Foxy hurled another milk crate and missed.

"I mean, look at you, Fox. You're pathetic. Name one dangerous situation you've gotten out of without help. You can't."

"I'll get out of this one!" Whatever irritation that had lingered from Foxy's and Charlie's conversation with Afton had not quite left yet, and none of the words that were being said were helping with that.

He threw an empty beer bottle that shattered upon making contact with Elizabeth's head.

She didn't acknowledge the bottle or his comment.

"You're useless. You can't stop Father,"

Foxy snatched some stupid-looking bobblehead of a bear off the floor and threw it, missing his target again.

"You can't save any of your friends. Not Fred, not Charlie, not Michael, not Lor,"

He missed with a sealed, water-damaged box.

"Not that insufferable scrap-heap Father calls his real daughter,"

The second box he threw missed as well.

"And more importantly, Fox, you can't stop me."

Foxy grabbed a rusty metal rod that was resting against a stack of crates covered by a dirty tarp.

"Yes, I can!"

He jammed it straight into Elizabeth's eye socket.

Her scratched up eyeball made a loud crunch as it broke.

She finally stumbled back a bit, her hand going over the empty hole that was left when Foxy pulled the rod out.

He held it in front of himself the same way that he had held the knife.

"Stop calling me Fox! The only person who can call me that is Riley, who you aren't. You're just a bitter, crappy imitation and that's all you'll ever be."

Elizabeth growled like some sort of rabid animal before lunging at Foxy, knocking him to the ground.

He was glad that he had instinctively brought the rod up in front of his face because it was the only thing stopping her knife from cutting his eye open.

"Shut up! I'm not a crappy imitation! You don't know shit about who I actually am! I'm _not!" _She increased the pressure she was applying against the rod after uttering the last word.

The blade was hovering centimeters above his eyeball.

His arms felt as if they were about to buckle.

Hydraulic fluid was dripping onto his face.

Despite his current position, Foxy still dared to retort, "You are!"

"No. I'm. Not!"

With each word, she raised the knife up and brought it back down. Foxy just barely managed to stop her arm with each swing downward, which felt more forceful than the last.

"You don't understand, you don't understand at all!"

His arms finally buckled, but he managed to move his head so that the knife only grazed the side of his face instead.

He quickly slipped out from under her and stumbled as far away as he could in the small space.

"You don't understand," she repeated, starting to swing the knife so sloppily at him that it actually wasn't all that hard to avoid.

It seemed that Foxy had once again struck a chord.

He continued to push his luck despite the very obvious risk of getting sliced open.

"Understand what? Your chasing of some impossible fantasy? You can't be her, Elizabeth!"

She ceased her violent outburst for a moment, pushing her hair (which was sticking thanks to all of the hydraulic fluid) out of her face.

"Oh Scott, you're right..."

Foxy was almost sure that she would be crying if she was able to.

"I try. I try so _fucking_ hard to be her. Father literally built me to replace what was missing, but I can't." Abruptly, Elizabeth decided to continue her outburst, knocking a number of things off of the singular shelf. "I can't!"

A bottle clipped Foxy in the shoulder.

"And that doesn't even matter now that Father has the real thing, does it? I'm just yesterday's fucking side project! Even though I'm a _way_ better daughter than that...that thing he's made!"

Elizabeth was now throwing a number of items, just as Foxy had done minutes earlier.

But he wasn't quite sure if half of them were even actually aimed at him.

"No, thing that _I _made! _I_ did most of the work! I _always _do most of the work!"

A box exploded upon making contact with the floor.

"_I_ recovered his body and replaced it with the fake!"

An old flashlight bounced off of the metal rod in front of Foxy's face.

"_I _dragged the Canner's body all the way from the warehouse to the shed with that _stupid _mutt on my heels!"

A can ricocheted off of a crate.

"_I _killed that woman behind your home on _his _orders and lost an eye in the process!"

A piece of scrap metal made contact with and shattered one of the lights in the room.

"_I _was his only company before all of this! Unless you count Miles, who hasn't spoken a word to him since he was brought back!" Elizabeth paused once more. "And how do you think he repaid me? Guess, Alex."

Foxy didn't think she actually wanted him to, but apparently, she did.

"Guess!"

"Uh...he sent you to us?"

"Yes. He sent me away to keep your minds off of him. To make sure that you didn't know he was still alive. And when did he expect me to come back? Never, probably, had I not failed!"

With that, she threw the knife so hard that it stuck in the wall behind him, narrowly missing his head.

"She doesn't even love him! But he still cares for her more than me no matter how hard she pushes him away!"

Foxy was pretty sure that he had heard enough of this conversation. This was just sad.

Plus, who knew how much longer he had before something hit him in the head and knocked him out.

Without her even noticing, Foxy stopped right beside the edge of the shelf. Using all of his strength, he pushed it toward her.

There was no reaction. No fear or anything. Elizabeth just let it fall on her, trapping her underneath it.

"I just want him to love me like family..." she mumbled quietly, face hidden behind her arm.

Foxy felt kinda bad for her now.

"He won't," he said before he could stop himself. "He doesn't love anybody like family. If he did, would he have done everything he's done to Miles, Michael, and Riley? He wants them back in his life, but I don't think it's because he loves them."

Elizabeth didn't respond.

Foxy gave her one last glance before opening the door and leaving the room.


	24. Gone

Foxy stood in front of the closed door for a moment before deciding to head back to where he had last seen Charlie and Michael. Hopefully, Afton hadn't overpowered the two of them.

He jogged down the hallway Elizabeth had carried him through and poked his head into the room.

There was no one there.

He stepped a bit further in.

The chairs and a few of the wheeled tables had been overturned. It seemed that the struggle had continued after he had gone.

No blood or bodies decorated the floor, so it was safe to assume that nobody had died. At least, not in the room.

Now unsure of what to do, Foxy made his way back into the hallway. He was all by himself once again. Unable to think of any other options, he decided that he'd just have to wander around until he ran into somebody else. Preferably, somebody who wasn't out for his blood.

He gripped the metal rod in his hands a little bit tighter.

He passed through a hallway he had been in earlier.

Or maybe he hadn't.

It was hard to tell.

Everything looked pretty much the same.

And it was dark.

He had never gotten his flashlight back.

A loud thundering started in the distance.

Something was heading his way.

Judging by the sound of long nails hitting the hard floor, it was probably that big gray wolf animatronic.

Foxy looked around at the nearby doors. It would probably be a good idea to get out of that thing's path before it saw him.

Any random door would—

"Hey!"

Somebody grabbed onto the back of Foxy's shirt and pulled. Hard.

Suddenly, he was in a cramped, closet-sized space.

He raised the metal rod up as much as he could, preparing himself to bash somebody's skull in.

Or at least, he was until somebody turned a flashlight on.

"Freddy? Ballora?"

Ballora raised her finger to her lips, shushing him.

The light turned off once more.

The wolf passed through the empty hall outside of the door.

Earlier, Foxy probably would have waited longer before stepping back into the hall.

But now wasn't earlier.

"It's gone." He straightened up and pushed the door open.

Freddy and Ballora followed after him, turning their flashlights back on.

"Feels like it's been forever since I've seen you guys. What's been happening? I heard Freddy scream earlier."

"O-oh, you heard that? It w-was nothing. I only screamed 'cause I l-l-lost a f-finger."

Foxy choked a little, turning around to look at Freddy while he walked. "What? You lost a _finger!?"_

Freddy nodded. "Uh-huh! S-see?" He lifted up his right hand (which was the one already wrapped with a bit of Charlie's coat), revealing that half of his pinky finger was missing.

Foxy couldn't quite fathom how he seemed so unaffected. And when he expressed this, Ballora said, "Oh, he was upset. But he calmed down once he realized that—"

"I've g-got a cartoon h-hand now!"

"Yes, that."

"And that's f-fun! But do y-you know what isn't?! We lost Charlie while I w-was busy losing a finger!"

"Oh, I saw her not too long ago. Don't know where she is now, though. I think her and Michael got away." Foxy poked his head around a corner before continuing. "We can find them together."

"What was happening when you saw them last?"

In minimal detail, Foxy explained what had happened in the murder room before Elizabeth grabbed him. "The room was empty when I came back."

"Wait." Ballora stopped.

Freddy stopped.

Foxy stopped.

"What? Do you hear something suspicious?"

"Static and voices." She threw open one of the adjacent doors, which was far sturdier and newer than all of the others.

The room behind it was filled with screens, screens of various sizes that were stacked one atop another until they reached the ceiling.

Every single one was turned on. Some played nothing but static, a few were playing some old cartoons and advertisements, and most of them were showing what appeared to be camera feeds.

Dusty keyboards and mice were scattered on the floor.

"Well, this seems excessive."

Foxy and Freddy walked closer to the screens, but the dancer remained in the doorway.

Probably because she wouldn't be able to make out what was on the screens anyway.

"What do you guys see?"

Foxy's eyes were drawn to one of the advertisements.

Well, a small chunk of an advertisement that kept looping.

It showed a guy in a rabbit suit holding a little blonde girl and a brunet boy that looked like he was going to cry.

The rabbit would say, _"Come to Freddy Fazbear's Pizza, where your child will make memories they'll never forget!" _before a logo would pop onto the screen.

He tore his eyes away and turned his attention to the screens that were displaying rooms and hallways.

"I _think _we're seeing a live feed of this place."

There was nothing happening on most of the cameras.

Why was this place so unnecessarily large?

What purpose did half of these rooms even serve?

"Oh, yeah, look!" He found the room where he had fought Elizabeth. She was still in there, pacing the room and moping hydraulic fluid off of her face while Miles sat in the corner. "I can see Miles and Elizabeth!"

It seemed like the redhead was talking but Foxy couldn't hear anything she was saying. "But I don't think there's sound."

He kept looking.

He also spotted the wolf, and Freddy spotted Riley.

And then...

"Th-there's Charlie and M-michael!"

Foxy looked where Freddy was pointing.

The two of them were the animatronic filled room that they had all been in earlier.

Charlie was sat on an overturned milk crate, trying to rebandage her leg while Michael watched her back.

"Hey, we know where that is! Sort of. I bet we can get there before they leave. Or at least, before they get too far. C'mon."


	25. Thrown

Charlie and Michael were just about to leave the room when Foxy, Freddy, and Ballora showed up.

They really didn't have all that much trouble getting to them. Or at least, not as much as they thought they would have.

Freddy decided to greet the two of them by shouting far louder than necessary. "Ch-charlie, Michael!"

Michael's entire body jolted at the sound. He clumsily turned around and swung Afton's axe at Foxy, who took a step back so that it didn't hit him in the throat.

"Oh...it's you three," he said hoarsely.

"We were about to try and find out where Elizabeth took you." Charlie nodded at Foxy.

"Yeah...we don't really have to worry about her anymore."

"Well then, that's one less thing for us to deal with."

"I hope you didn't cause too much damage to my machinery. It's expensive, you know."

Everybody turned around saw Afton, his shadowed form completely unmistakable as it stood at the end of the wide hallway.

Nobody that still had a flashlight tried to shine it at him.

"Well, actually, I suppose I don't care all that much if Elizabeth is damaged. She is of little use to me now, unless you count whatever parts that were left undamaged as being useful for spares."

A door opened and slammed shut somewhere.

Afton cleared his throat. "But that's not what I came here to tell you, of course."

He took one small step towards them, a nasty squelch audible in the otherwise dead silence. "I actually wanted to make sure you all know that I _will_ have my son back...and that I _will _have you all dead and lifeless on my floors."

"Yeah, you haven't been too successful with that so far," Foxy muttered.

Afton's head snapped towards him.

"You...when you are dead, I will make sure that you are strung up on my wall like a trophy. You are a nuisance worse than any other."

Michael took an awkward step forward as well. "It's one against five now. D'you really think you can take all of us down at once, Dad?"

The killer's head tilted to the side a bit. "Of course not, Michael. Do you take me for an idiot?" He took a small step to the right.

Riley stepped out from behind the corner, tall and imposing behind her father with her zombie-like posture.

Another figure stepped out from behind the opposite corner, the steady blue light of its eyes giving it away as the wolf.

"I'm not doing anything else until the odds are appropriately evened out. Kill them."

And then, seemingly all in an instant, the two threats that stood behind Afton came at them.

Foxy didn't know if it was because Afton had told her to, or because she was still upset about the whole sledgehammer thing, _or _because he was standing right in the middle, but Riley went straight for him.

He attempted to get out of her way but wasn't successful.

She grabbed him by the front of his shirt.

He dropped the weapon he was holding.

And the next thing Foxy knew, the two of them were leaving the rest of the group.

He couldn't tell what was happening to all of them. All he could see was a mass of shadows that was quickly getting further and further away from him.

He couldn't get separated again.

Nothing good ever happened when he was separated.

He couldn't be dragged away.

Foxy grabbed onto anything that he could.

He attempted to latch onto the pipes that were attached to the walls in random places, but they easily slipped from his grasp with dust and/or moisture.

He grabbed onto the handle of a partially open door. The entire handle popped off the door, alongside a chunk of rotting wood that surrounded it.

"Crap."

Foxy let the handle drop to the floor.

He attempted to awkwardly slip out of his shirt since that was the only thing holding him captive.

It was about halfway off when he fell to the floor.

Foxy scrambled about a foot away before Riley stepped over him and grabbed him by his wrists.

He had pretty small wrists, so it wasn't particularly hard for her to grab both with one hand.

"Riley, let go of me—!" He flailed around as much as possible.

He tried to kick her in the shins.

And then, abruptly, he was thrown into a half-open door.

The door swung into the wall.

Foxy hit the floor.

A dim, dusty, flickering light bulb swung on the ceiling above him.

Despite his body screaming at him to stop moving, Foxy forced himself to.

He turned onto his side.

A fallen shelf came into view, alongside two figures that were sat on the floor: Miles and Elizabeth.

Miles vanished as soon as Foxy made eye contact.

Elizabeth only acknowledged him with a short glance before returning to mindlessly twirling that knife between her fingers.

He got back onto his feet, heading straight for the door.

In his stumbling, he partially ran into the half-open door and then into the doorframe, but it didn't really matter. The pain was nothing compared to everything else he had gone through.

Riley was slowly approaching from the middle of the hallway.

Foxy attempted to slip past her broad-shouldered frame.

She caught him by the arm with her iron grip, throwing him back into the room.

He couldn't push himself back up again.


	26. Beating Heart

Foxy couldn't get back up.

He tried and failed again and again.

"Riley,"

She was quickly closing the space between them with her long strides.

He started to scramble back across the floor.

"Riley, stop, please."

There was a scoff - or maybe it was a short laugh - from somewhere beside him.

And then there was the sound of a bunch of something metal rolling across the floor, one of which bounced off of his elbow.

Foxy grabbed it.

It turned out to be another one of those metal rods.

A pincer full of rusty, bloodied nails came at him.

Without thinking, he raised the rod up with both hands.

It was snapped in half as soon as the pincers clamped down.

Foxy's eyes darted between the two broken halves. "Crap." He chucked the two halves at her.

Riley blocked one with her arm while the other missed and flew past her.

She slowly turned her head to watch it hit the wall before looking back at him.

Foxy grabbed another one of the rods.

He forced himself into a kneeling position, and then shakily back onto his feet.

It took him a moment to fully regain his balance.

Riley remained still while he did, simply watching, watching as Foxy held up the rod like it was a bat.

He tried to make himself forget the face behind the cracked clown mask. He couldn't keep fighting her. If Foxy could take down Elizabeth, he could take down Riley too.

No, it wasn't Riley anymore. All that remained was a lifeless drone of Afton's.

There wasn't even a face behind that mask.

Not one that he knew.

There were no eyes looking at him, even though it felt like there were.

Those eyeholes were nothing but an empty void of blackness.

Foxy wasn't going to hurt somebody he cared a lot about.

It was just a shell.

It was nothing.

Nothing...

There was a shift in her stance, the sound of one of her boots sliding back across the floor a little.

Nothing...

He braced himself.

She started coming at him.

He'd be able to clock her right in the side of the head.

But he didn't.

He missed.

He missed because she never actually got close enough for him to hit her.

Something held her back.

_Someone _held her back.

A pair of arms had caught her around the throat.

Foxy caught the gaze of a green eye.

A couple of drops of hydraulic fluid hit the floor.

"Kneel _down_," Elizabeth hissed.

With a rough shove, she forced Riley down onto her knees. She remained stock-still once she hit the floor.

Foxy also went stock-still. He had lost the ability to move.

"Scott, that encounter was painful to watch. That swing you were about to make..." that short laugh repeated, "that wouldn't have done shit to stop her from disemboweling you."

"You saved me," he whispered in shock. It was the only thing that he could manage to get out.

Elizabeth looked away from him. "Well, I was sort of hoping that you'd be able to save yourself again, but clearly it was only dumb luck last time. I even kicked the rods over to you, thinking that they'd help you."

"You _saved _me," Foxy repeated.

The animatronic groaned, "We did establish that, yes. Can we move on? The more you repeat it the more I start to regret my decision."

"Sorry," he said quickly, "but...I just...why? Weren't you hellbent on gouging my eyes out just a little bit ago?"

He was spared another short glance before Elizabeth looked back at the floor. "Listen, I know that you don't care for me and the things that I've done. I know that when you did care for me it was only because you used to think that I was someone else. _Her_," she gestured half-heartedly to Riley, "but I have definitely received more respect...and...love from you and the others than I ever have from Father."

"Still not quite understanding you."

Another groan.

"When you left, for a shadow of a moment, I thought you were right about him. But then, rather quickly, I decided once again that your words were idiotic and wrong. Miles told me I was being delusional. I told him to shut up. I told him that I was going to prove him wrong.

"I headed out and happened upon you and your friends talking with Father and his walking can openers. I heard him say that I am useful for nothing but spare parts. Those words hurt me. I mean, I knew deep down that was how he felt about me and that you were right, but I was in denial until I heard it out loud." Elizabeth paused. "You're right, Fox. Alex. As much as it pains me to admit it, you're right. And I am done being the mat that Father wipes his feet on."

"So...you're helping us now?"

"I...am going to help you."


	27. Broken Beyond Fixing?

"Seriously? You're being serious?"

"Yes. I am being serious." Elizabeth wiped some of the hydraulic fluid off of her face and onto the sleeve of her coveralls. Her empty eye socket wasn't gushing as much as it was earlier.

"This is great. This is _really_ great!" Foxy suddenly felt like all the life that had been sapped out of him was back. He was smiling and couldn't stop for some reason. "You know, I could hug you right now."

"Please don't. I don't want your blood all over my clothes."

"But you just wiped hydraulic fluid all over your sleeve."

"Well, that's different because it's mine," she said with a half-smile.

Foxy laughed. Just a little bit. "Sorry about your eye, by the way."

"Oh, it's fine. But you could give me one of yours to make up for it."

"I would, but I'm not really into the whole pirate look, y'know?"

"Can't be sure until you try it out, though." Elizabeth placed her hand on the knife in her breast pocket.

And then she quickly dropped it back to her side.

"I'm only joking," she said. "But enough with the mindless chatter. We have more important things to do. Like further increasing our numbers."

"Increasing our numbers? Who else is gonna join up with us?"

"What do you mean? There's someone right here." Elizabeth very lightly kicked Riley in the side.

Foxy's voice caught in his throat and he had to cough before he could manage to speak again. "Riley? But...but you said she was a lost cause."

Elizabeth rolled her eye. "Good Scott, do I have to repeat myself? As I said earlier, I lie sometimes. All that stuff about your friend being gone was a lie. I said it in the hopes that you'd give up on trying to talk sense into her, that you'd swing that sledgehammer again."

She placed a foot on Riley's back and started yanking out a number of the cords and wires that fed into the back of her head and neck. She was selective with what she pulled, frequently dropping a few from the bunch that she had grabbed.

"Something I said that _was_ true was that we could not drill words into her head. I've never met anybody quite as fucking stubborn and strong-willed as this one is. So, in the end, we drilled holes into her head. She is only compliant because her thoughts are not actually hers."

Foxy looked away from Riley and back up at Elizabeth. "What does _that _mean?"

"They're artificially fed into her head. Anything she would actually think is clouded over by whatever Father wanted me to make her think. If the right things are unplugged that'll no longer be the case."

"And if the wrong stuff is pulled?"

"Then we'll add another tally to the body count."

At the look on Foxy's face, she chuckled. "Don't worry. I know what I'm doing. Again, I did most of the work needed to make her like this. Despite the resent and jealousy I've felt towards her, I won't let her die again. I won't kill her. No matter how _easy_ it would be for me to do so."

"You know, you sure do talk about killing and harming people a lot."

"I've spent most of my existence in the presence of William Afton, infamous child murderer. What do you expect?"

"Alright, well, we still need to work on that, I think."

"And when do you propose we do that?"

It was Foxy's turn to roll his eyes. "When we get out of here, duh. And you called _me _stupid."

He received a funny look.

"You're implying that you want _me _to come with you after all of this? You'll allow that after seeing how I really am? Do you think the others will? You _are _the stupid one."

"Come on, you're clearly not entirely evil if you're willing to switch sides and help us. Plus, any fear I felt in your presence is already completely gone."

"I can change that if you'd like."

"See? I felt no fear when you said that to me just now."

"Allow me to correct myself," Elizabeth said, "you're hopelessly stupid."

"Well, what're you gonna do once Afton is all taken care of? Stay in this cold, dark place by yourself?"

"Where else can I go?"

"Stay with _us_." Foxy really emphasized the last word.

The animatronic smiled sadly. "I deserve no happy ending, Alex. I'm not sure why you have difficulty understanding that. Perhaps you've smacked your head one too many times tonight. I may be helping you now, but does that make up for every terrible thing that I've done? Does that instantly change every negative trait I have?"

_"No,_ 'cause that stuff takes time. Time that you can spend _with us_._" _He once again overemphasized the last word.

Elizabeth gave him an unreadable look in response and nothing else.

She sliced off the second belt off of Riley's waist with the knife. A few different small boxes were connected to it, and the stuff that Elizabeth had unplugged were all feeding into them.

"Hand me that metal rod."

Foxy passed her the metal rod that he was still holding.

After carelessly dropping the belt onto the floor, Elizabeth stabbed through every single box with the rod.

"There. Done."

Foxy blinked, "Wait, that's it? She's—"

"Well, I don't think it'll be instantaneous. It might take a while."

Foxy couldn't help but be impatient. He knelt down in front of Riley. "Is there any way to speed it up?"

"I don't know."

Elizabeth knelt down next Foxy, pulled the clown mask off of Riley's face, and tossed it to the side.

Riley's eyes appeared to see right through the two of them.

"Riley." Elizabeth began to lightly and repeatedly smack her face. "Riley Blake. Snap out of it, won't you? We don't really have a lot of time to wait for you to come around."

Slowly, _very slowly,_ Riley's gaze met Elizabeth's.

Foxy grabbed the animatronic's wrist.

"Uh...I think you can stop smacking her now."

"Right," she said.

Riley's eyes then met Foxy's.

She remained quiet, so somebody else filled the silence.

Somebody that was passing through the hall.

"How long will it take to get these rats out of my home? This is getting ridiculous. Even the creations I made for killing cannot get rid of them." Afton paused somewhere next to the room they were in. "I need to find where that boy left my pile of scrap metal. I fear I might actually need it."

Elizabeth had a bitter expression on her face when Foxy turned his head to look at her.

"No, they won't win. I won't allow it." And with that, he kept walking, the sound of his footsteps slowly fading away.

Foxy had the sneaking suspicion that he was heading to his murder room to get another weapon.

The short bout of silence that followed his exit was broken by Riley.

_"Him." _A spark of something flashed across her unliving eyes."I going to fucking kill him."

She abruptly got to her feet and was out of the room before either of them could process anything.

"Huh." Elizabeth stood back up too. "I think she _might_ be going after Father."

"Then why are we just standing here? Let's go after her!"


	28. Cornered

A loud scream echoed down the hallway shortly after Riley vanished.

It clearly belonged to Afton, who seemed to be already aware that his daughter was no longer going to be compliant.

Foxy ran out of the room and turned right.

Elizabeth grabbed him by the back of his shirt and dragged him to the left.

"This way, Alex."

"Right, I knew that."

Loud crashes and bangs followed the scream.

"Daddy,"

Riley came into view once they rounded the corner.

She passed through the doorway of the Afton's blood-stained murder room.

"Daddy dearest, Why're you running away from me? I thought you wanted me around!"

Afton threw every chair and table in the room into her path to slow her down. "Stay away! You're not thinking clearly anymore!"

Riley threw every table and chair back into the wall. "Maybe, maybe not. Maybe my head's all fogged up, or maybe I've got the clearest skies up there!"

"Are you _sure _that you fixed her?" Foxy asked.

"Yes, this is not _my_ doing."

"Then what's up with her?"

"I don't know, perhaps she's having some sort of episode or something." Elizabeth shrugged and picked up her speed, quickly overtaking Foxy.

He thought back to when he'd see something weird in Riley's eyes, when he'd see something unfamiliar flash by and she'd act very unlike herself.

When she stuck her hand in that corpse behind the dumpster,

When she argued with Bon-Bon after they had lost Afton's car,

He always wondered what would have happened if those moments went on for longer than they did.

But maybe this wasn't even that.

Maybe her head _was _still fogged from all the cables that had been fed into her brain.

Or maybe she was just really, _really _upset.

Afton had tripped over his own feet while backing away and ended up trapped in a corner.

Elizabeth reached the doorway and stopped.

Foxy pushed himself to go faster.

"Elizabeth, you don't know what you're doing. Stop this."

"Shut up! I told you not to call me that!" Riley was practically standing over him and Afton was almost completely consumed by her shadow.

Elizabeth held out her arm out and Foxy had to stop himself from running into it.

He gave her a quizzical look.

"I don't think we should interfere with this," she whispered. There was a bit of an odd look on her face.

"But—"

"This is just like Father's attempted brainwashing sessions. Minus the restraints. We should let this play out."

"Okay..." Foxy replied hesitantly.

"Shut up and listen to me. Listen to me for once, and listen good. Are you listening?"

"Yes, yes, I'm listening now." There was an actual note of nervousness in Afton's voice.

"Alright, good. Keep listening because this is important. This is really important." Riley's voice cracked at the end of her sentence before dropping down to a whisper. "I hate you," she said. "I fucking hate you!"

She stepped even closer.

"You ruined my fucking life, did you know that? Did you know that you did that?" Her voice cracked more and shook even more. "And you ruined Miles' life. And Michael's life. And Mom's life. And the lives of _every _single one of your victims. _Every_ single one. Did you know that?"

"I—"

"I really can't tell if you do. I can't tell if the only words you truly listen to are your own, your own words, or if just don't give a shit. Do you know why it's hard to tell? Do you? It's because we try, and try, and try, and try _so _hard to get the hell away from you but you don't stay away. You don't. You don't stay away."

"Well, that's because—"

"I tried _so_ damn hard to distance myself from you. Did you know that? I tried so damn hard to act like we weren't related. _So. Damn. Hard. _I wanted nothing more than that. I tried so hard to forget what happened, to forget what I had seen of the sick, twisted shit you got up to. But I couldn't. I couldn't. I couldn't do it, no matter what I did, I couldn't.

"People compared me to you all the time. 'Oh, you have his laugh. You have his smile.' Fine, that's fine! Maybe I'll stop hearing it if I stop laughing and stop smiling! Maybe, maybe after you died I'd finally stop thinking about you, maybe I'd stop hearing about you, maybe I'd stop being reminded of what happened!

"No, of course not. People asked about you all the time. They asked, and asked, and asked no matter how many times Mom told them to go away, but that was fine. I could learn to block them out and act completely uninterested every time they tried to mention you. They'd stop asking if they stopped getting a reaction, right? No, of course not.

"I still relived the accident again, and again, and again every time I went to sleep, but that was fine. Maybe I wouldn't relive it as often if I didn't sleep as much!

"I'd see the scars on my body and feel that metal clamp closing around me again, the monster you created trying to do what it was built to do. I'd hear your voice threatening me, threatening me with death if I didn't keep quiet about what really happened to me, but that was fine too! Maybe I wouldn't have to see the scars as often if I only wore long-sleeved shirts and pants!

"You want to know something? Do you? I said to myself that when I finally found you I'd hand you over to Burke and make sure that you rotted away in jail. I said that I wouldn't _wrap my hands around your throat_ no matter how much I fucking wanted to. But you know what? You know what?"

"I saved your life, Elizabeth."

"When? When, huh? When I was six, or this year? Because both of those times, _both of them, _I wouldn't have needed your help if it wasn't for _your_ killing machines."

"I'm your father!"

"So what? So fucking what? I don't care. I don't. I want you to feel what I felt. I do. I _really _do."

The pincer snapped open.

Afton's scream cut through the air once more.

And then it ended abruptly.

It ended with that pincer snapping shut on his head.

Foxy squeezed his eyes shut at the gory display and cringed at the wet crunch that the killer's head made.

"Are you proud of me now, Daddy? I'm just like you. Just. Like. You. How sad is that?" Riley dropped back onto her knees.

Foxy opened his eyes again and stared at the now headless body on the floor.

He looked back up at Elizabeth. It seemed that she hadn't looked away at all.

"...Riley?" He walked into the room and stopped when he was about a foot behind the redhead.

"I killed him. I killed him, Fox. Can you believe that? I can't. I can't believe it. I killed him."

"Yeah...and now he can't hurt anybody anymore. Right...?" Foxy looked over his shoulder at the animatronic that still stood in the doorway.

"Right. He can't come back unless I decide to put him back together...which I won't. Not again."

Riley said nothing.

Foxy went to place a hand on her shoulder.

"Alex."

He paused.

"I think she needs time alone."

"But...what if that wolf-thing comes in here? It's probably still running around."

"She'll be fine. It's not programmed to see her as a threat anymore."

Reluctantly, Foxy walked back over to the doorway.

"I'll see you again soon, Riley," he said. "C'mon, Liz. Let's try to find the others."

"Liz? Is that what you're calling me now?" Elizabeth followed after him.

Riley remained where she was, her eyes still locked on the body in front of her.

The blood that had pooled on the floor was beginning to soak into the knees of her pants.


	29. Haze

Riley felt like she should have felt something.

Maybe sadness. A very, very, _very _small part of her cared for William Afton, the one that she knew back before the accident, even though she knew that that version of him was not who he really was.

Maybe some sort of weird relief. He wouldn't come back to haunt her and the rest of her family ever again. He wouldn't be able to try and control her ever again.

Or maybe shock at her actions. She had killed him and stooped down to his level.

But in reality, she felt numb and nothing else. Despite her hard, shaky breathing and the tears streaming down her face, she felt numb and nothing else.

Riley tried to force herself to feel something, but it didn't work.

After what could've easily been thirty seconds or thirty minutes, she could see somebody appear in her peripheral vision.

"Miles," she managed to force out.

**"Riley,"** he said. **"It's good to have you back. Do you know what's transpired since the warehouse burned down?"**

"For the most part? No. But I can guess."

**"What do you remember?"**

She paused, still not turning to fully look at her brother. She racked her brain for concrete memories but it was difficult to find anything.

She could remember being in that hallway underneath the warehouse after the stairwell collapsed.

_It was pitch black. The only thing she could see was the blue lights of the wolf's eyes as it tried to drag her away._

_She struggled as hard as could and eventually managed to wrench her ankle free._

_But she only stumbled a couple of feet away before it tackled her to the ground, the burning hot, sharp metal pieces that framed its body stabbing into her flesh._

_It cut her with its long claws and bit into her with its rows and rows of sharp teeth._

_She fought as hard as she could to keep it off but it was hard to avoid attacks that she couldn't see._

_She was losing a lot of blood._

_It quickly became difficult to stay conscious and to keep hitting back..._

"Well, I remember dying..."

She could hear her father's voice in the very back of her head, his words starting off as completely unintelligible.

"And when I first woke back up, I think..."

_"Elizabeth...wake up."_

_Riley was immediately greeted with blurry vision and a metallic taste in her mouth._

_She coughed and there was definitely blood._

_Everything hurt, like red hot needles stabbing directly at every nerve in her body._

_Her torn up clothes clung to her body with blood, far more blood than should have been allowed outside of her body if she was still breathing._

_William Afton, her father, stood in front of her. There was a nasty, unsettling grin plastered on his face that was partially hidden by a molting, discolored, mascot head._

_A hulking creature sat behind him, slightly obscured by a wheeled metal table. It sputtered and growled, its empty gaze finding hers._

_A bit to the left of the creature stood a woman that looked disturbingly similar to her. She didn't seem as happy as the other two._

_"Don't call me by that name."_

_"I'm just trying to help you, Elizabeth." Afton's hand reached for her face. _

_She flinched away, instinctively trying to bring her arms in front of herself, only to find that she couldn't. The chains that strung them up prevented her from doing so. "Don't fucking touch me! I'd rather choke on my own fucking fingers than get help from you."_

_"Elizabeth_—_"_

_Scott, it was like he kept saying it just to annoy her._

_"Stop calling me that!"_

"And that's it..."

**"Perhaps that is for the better. Some things are best left forgotten."**

Riley didn't really know how to interpret that but didn't doubt that he was right. She had a strange feeling that she didn't _want _to remember what was missing.

"Miles?"

**"Yes?"**

"Do you think..._that_," she nodded towards the body on the floor, "was because my head was still fogged up, or...?"

**"It's difficult to say. It is possible that you still weren't quite there, but it's also possible that your years of pent up anger and resentment finally got the better of you..." **Miles paused. **"Believe whatever you think seems more likely."**

Riley was still unsure. If she was being honest with herself, both of those seemed just as likely.

There was a long drawn out silence between them.

**"I know that everything feels strange and confusing to you right now, but I feel that I must remind you where we are and that we cannot remain here for too long. Father may finally be dead and gone, but one of his dangerous creations, the one that brought an end to you, is still roaming free. Your friends may need help taking it down. **_**Your **_**help."**

"Yeah. Yeah, you're right." Riley rose to her feet and forced herself to regain her usual composure.

If she could keep her fear, self-doubt, resentment, self-hatred, and trauma locked deep inside for nearly seventeen years, she damn well ought to be able to do it again now.

And then maybe later she'd finally try to find a healthier way to deal with those things...

"I'll see you soon, Miles."

With that, she turned her back on William's body and started to leave the room.

**"Hopefully you will."**

Miles vanished again.

As Riley walked, she undid the straps connecting the pincer to her arm. She really didn't want the damn thing, seeing the blood, flesh, and bits of brain matter on it was making her kinda nauseous.

And crushing Afton's skull alongside that hideous rabbit mask had kinda busted it a bit so it wasn't even useful anymore anyways.

There were also a few different cords connected to it that fed straight into her arm, but she didn't really care about the consequences of pulling them out, so she did just that.

Spots of crimson started to appear under the wraps on her arm, but she didn't care. It didn't matter.

She let the pincer loudly fall to the floor.

"Now, where has everybody gone?"


	30. The Final Monster

Mere moments ago, Foxy was passing through one of the underground's many hallways in vaguely comfortable silence, Elizabeth trailing one or two feet behind him.

Then, oh so abruptly, that all changed.

Somebody stuttered out Foxy's name in alarm.

Somebody else grabbed his arm and pulled him forward.

And before he knew it, four people stood between him and the animatronic, all of them raising something up in preparation to strike.

Charlie's voice cut through the otherwise dead silence, sounding almost strained. "Foxy, you gotta keep a better eye out. She was _right _behind you."

Elizabeth's one-eyed gaze briefly swept across the four blunt instruments aimed at her before she slowly raised her hands up in surrender, her expression making her look completely unthreatened and almost bored.

"No, no, guys!" Foxy squeezed his way past the blockade that Michael, Freddy, Ballora, and Charlie had formed, standing next to Elizabeth once more. "It's okay, she's on our side now."

All but Freddy raised an eyebrow at that, continuing to look at the redhead with mistrust and suspicion.

"C-cool!" he whisper-shouted.

"Not so fast," Michael said, still sounding out of it. "I...wait, I thought she was...y'know, all taken care of."

"Me too," Charlie muttered from beside him.

Deciding that that question was not the most important one to dwell on at the moment, Ballora decided to bring something else up. "Foxy, what makes you think you can trust her? What makes you sure that she's not just lying again, and using whatever manipulative tricks she learned from Afton?" Her voice was much softer and less aggressive than Charlie and Michael's, as if she, like Freddy, was more willing to jump into the boat of "oh, okay."

"She saved my life just a little bit ago." Foxy looked at Elizabeth, who appeared to be very uncomfortable with being spoken about as if she wasn't standing there and was trying not to show it. He then added, "She realized that she wasn't aligning herself with the right person, and would rather give us a hand now."

"Yes, I'm sorry for what I've done. I'm sorry for impersonating your friend and for aiding Father in his schemes. Charlotte, I am...sorry for stabbing you in the shoulder," the animatronic said rather stiffly, "with this knife." She brandished the weapon for emphasis.

Charlie briefly looked down at the knife before making eye contact again. She seemed slightly less suspicious of Elizabeth, but only slightly.

"Alright...I guess if we're apologizing, then I should say sorry for slashing you across the face..." she slowly pushed the redhead's arm down so that that blade wasn't so close to her face, "...with that knife," and then there was a short pause, "I'm sorry."

Elizabeth waved her hand dismissively. "It's fine. Only a simple scratch. I've experienced far worse throughout my existence. Plus, I deserved it anyway."

"I'm still not buying any of this," Michael said. "This...copy of my sister is probably gonna slit our throats when our backs are turned and then run back to Dad... She's not sorry. She's happy with what she is."

"Happy? Forgive me if this is just because of my inexperience with the emotion, but I do not believe that I am. Trust me, if I had the choice not to be built as a replacement for somebody else, I would take it, because the shoes are impossible to fill as perfectly as expected from me and my failure drives me mad." Her voice was now so stiff that it somehow made her sound more robotic. "And for your information, I can't run back to Father because he's dead. Again. How do I know that? Because I stood by and watched as he was killed. I understand why you're apprehensive to trust me, but please, I urge you to give me a chance to prove myself to you all before reaching your final verdict."

There was a long, awkward, stretch of noiselessness that followed.

"Guys, she's c-coming up b-behind you!"

"Huh?"

Foxy and Elizabeth turned to find Riley.

"Oh, it's you." Foxy smiled slightly.

"It's me."

When he looked back to the others, he found that they had all once again raised their weapons in self-defense.

"Right...didn't get to tell you this part yet, but Liz undid whatever was wrong with Riley after she saved me."

Ballora frowned. "But Miles said—"

"He was right," Elizabeth interrupted. "At the time, anyway. But sometimes things change unexpectedly."

Michael's expression changed straightway.

He looked his sister up and down, as if he was trying to make sure that it was actually _her _again.

Once he seemed to decide that it was, he somewhat begrudgingly told Elizabeth that she'd get her chance.

She offered a thankful smile in response. "Alright, now that we're done playing catch up, we still have one more problem to deal with."

There was the clink of mechanical claws on the floor, the grinding of multiple gears, and the low growl of a beast from somewhere around the corner they stood near, getting louder and louder with each passing second.

"A problem that is now quickly approaching us"

A large shadow shrouded the already dark hallway in even more darkness.

Foxy and Riley automatically took about six steps back from the thing, whereas Elizabeth did not.

The volatile creation seemed to have a few new tears in it's covering - mostly around its head and neck - but seemed otherwise intact.

In one swift movement, its large clawed hand made a broad, diagonal sweep towards the ceiling, which Elizabeth narrowly managed to avoid by ducking.

Before fully standing back up, she grabbed a long plank of wood that was resting against the wall and swung it into the monster's neck.

It began to glitch out and Elizabeth took the opportunity to quickly say, "Follow me."

And with that, she was off, everybody else following close behind her.

The wolf, after regaining its senses, followed as well.

"There's one room in this place where that thing can't go," Elizabeth threw one of the doors open, "and it's through the door at the opposite end of this gallery."

They stood before a room cleaner than any they had been in before, which contained a lonely stage and practically nothing else.

As much as Foxy would have loved to stand around and wonder what used to stand on that stage, there wasn't time.

He followed everyone into the room that had been pointed out.

Riley slammed the door shut, leaving the wolf to uselessly ram into it.

It remained outside the circular room they now occupied, scratching at the door.

Elizabeth let out a long sigh, "I see that you've damaged the facial recognition software that kept that mutt from seeing Ms. Blake and I as a threat."

"D-did we? Wh-whoops."

"It's alright, though. I suppose if you hit anything enough times _something_ is bound to break. But that does eliminate my plan A, which would've been to manually deactivate it myself. If I get close enough to attempt that now, it will surely rip my arms off. Which, I'm sorry to say, I'm not all that willing to have happen."

"So now what?" Foxy asked, trying to ignore all of the noise that the wolf was continuing to make.

"Well, I have two backup plans left. The first one involves us trying to pin it down (avoiding all of the sharp parts on it, of course) and whack it with things until it enters total shutdown. Which, will probably take about an hour since it's been redesigned to be far more resilient. The second involves trying to light it on fire."

Charlie let out a short laugh. "You do realize what happened the last time we lit something on fire, right?"

"Of course. Father's warehouse collapsed, Riley died, and the rest of you just barely made it out alive," Elizabeth rattled off quickly. "But this won't be like last time."

"That's true," Riley said. "Last time we didn't really have time to thoroughly plan anything out, and there were nearly as many of them as there were of us."

"Plus, you were far away from the exit when the fire started, which we won't be."

Foxy leaned back against the side of a rusted metal scoop that was jutting out of the wall. "I don't know, the sound of playing with fire again still makes me nervous."

"You came here to put an end to Father and his evil creations, didn't you? Even if things do go a little wrong, it'll still help achieve an end. A bad ending is still an end, is it not?"

"Maybe so, but still think we should try our best to avoid getting the bad ending here."

"Then we'll just have to be extra careful, won't we?"

Everybody exchanged looks, silently coming to an agreement that was eventually vocalized by Foxy. "Alright, let's hear the details of this plan."

"Father has a rather large collection of film reels stored in his projector room. The film on those reels is made of celluloid."

"Oh, I see where this is going," Charlie cut in. "Celluloid is super flammable, so we're going to spread it around this dump and then light it, right?"

"Right."

"Not a bad idea, I guess. But we'll still need something to light it with," Michael muttered.

Everybody paused to think for a moment.

"Riley's lighter!" Foxy finally said.

"Fox, I have no idea where that lighter is."

"But I do! It's in the car, in one of the pockets of your black jacket." He pulled his car keys out of his pocket. "You want me to go get it, or...?"

Freddy's hand shot into the air. "Oh, I'll g-get it! I'll g-get it!"

Foxy tossed him the keys.

"Charlotte, Michael, Laura, Alex, I want you four to stay here and make as much noise possible near the door. It'll keep the monster distracted, and drown out whatever noise might be made elsewhere."

Elizabeth turned to Riley. "You and I will spread the film around. You're durable, and I know the layout of this place best."

"Can I go with you two instead?" Foxy blurted out.

"Why?"

"Because...having three people spread film around is faster than having two do it?" he provided rather lamely.

The animatronic gave him a _'is that really the best thing you can come up with?'_ look, but agreed to let him come anyway.

"We can't go through the door with the mutt right outside, but that's perfectly fine, we have another way out." Elizabeth directed their attention to a long window that stretched across the opposite wall, which was dirtied by what looked like hydraulic fluid. "That thing is too big to pass through the doorways to the hallway past that window, which is why it hasn't bothered to come around and look in."

"Okay, so who wants to smash the window?" Ballora asked.

Before anybody could say anything, Riley punched straight through the glass with her prosthetic hand.

"Oh shit, didn't think that'd actually work," she mumbled with what was almost a laugh.

"Yes, you may not remember, but most of the bones in that arm were practically dust when I started working on you," Elizabeth said. "I had to find a way to replace them and completely restructure your arm. The mechanical parts _may _have given you a slight increase in strength."

"Well then..." Riley made the hole she had created even bigger so that they could crawl through without being stabbed by shards of glass.

Once her, Freddy, Foxy, and Elizabeth were in the hall, they said short goodbyes to the three that were staying behind, just in case.

"Freddy, I want you to crawl straight through that small vent by your feet. Once you're out, take two lefts and a right. You'll find yourself facing the elevator."

"Okie Dokie!"

Elizabeth led Foxy and Rily through one of the two doorways after Freddy disappeared into the vent and began walking at a moderately fast pace. "It's not that far from here."

They went straight ahead, took a left, a right, two more lefts, and stopped in front of a door identical to almost all of the others around them.

"In here."

Riley was the one to push open the door, which squeaked a little.

A single wooden chair, an old film projector perched precariously atop a small stool, and about four dusty boxes filled to the brim with film reels occupied the room.

The two redheads carried the boxes, leaving Foxy pretty much empty-handed.

"Alex, do you think that you can take anything else flammable you see while we go around and dump it in the middle of the hall? This film will need help no matter how flammable it is."

Foxy tried to copy Elizabeth's quiet tone, "Sure thing." He followed them out of the room, watching the trail of film begin.

He grabbed every box, stack of papers, box, or random piece of wood laying around that they passed and placed it like he was told, trying not to be too noisy about it.

They made a wide arc around the gallery so they wouldn't risk being caught.

Michael, Charlie, and Ballora's symphony of unpleasant, grating, and loud sounds was audible far beyond that circular room and the gallery connected to it.

Eventually, they were walking through the doorway opposite of the one that they had initially gone through.

The noises were reduced to the light banging of an axe and flashlight against the wall once they were spotted.

Freddy had apparently returned before them.

"Got that lighter, Fred?"

"Y-yep!"

"Listen, the mutt is gonna notice when we all leave and this room goes quiet, so I'm gonna need you all to stick close to me, and I'm gonna need you all to move really fucking fast, understood?"

After receiving six nods of confirmation, Elizabeth ushered them all through the large hole Riley had made in the glass.

They passed through one of those two doorways and began to run.

They took a right, a left, another left, three rights,

A loud howl resonated throughout the underground space.

They were being chased again.

Right,

Left,

Right,

Right,

The elevator came into view.

Foxy spared a quick glance over his shoulder.

Michael was falling behind.

After stumbling about a bit in some sort of strange zigzag, he fell against one of the walls.

That hit to the head had really taken a toll on him.

"Guys, we're losing Michael!"

They all skidded to a halt.

Riley attempted to go and collect her older brother but was stopped by Elizabeth. "Stay. I'll grab him."

Two bright blue lights appeared in the dark room they had just left.

The metal monstrosity had already caught up with them, it seemed.

It prepared itself to pounce, a low growl rumbling from its voicebox.

Foxy _knew _there wasn't going to be enough time for her to drag Michael away to safety.

And he _knew_ that there was nothing any of them could do with how far away they stood.

Something bad was going to happen to Michael and there was nothing they could do about it.

Or at least, that was all Foxy could think, until he was proven wrong by something bad instead happening to—

"Liz!"

After she had uttered a quiet string of obscenities, Elizabeth had stood over Michael so that the wolf made contact with her instead.

She staggered a bit when half of its weight was thrown onto her, but still managed to stay upright.

There was a loud crunch and a spray of hydraulic fluid as the creature's jaws clamped down on her arm.

"Grab him!"

Was this truly going to be a cruel repeat of the warehouse?

"Hurry up and grab him! I'm not going to last very long as this thing's chew toy!"

No, this wasn't going to be a repeat. Foxy wouldn't allow it.

"Freddy, grab Michael!"

"Okay!" Freddy shoved the lighter into Charlie's hand. "H-hold this f-for me!"

"Riley, help me grab Liz!"

"Will do, Fox."

Michael kept attempting to get back onto his feet, but couldn't get past his knees.

Freddy rushed over and pulled him up.

The wolf dug its claws into Elizabeth's shoulder and tried to pull her arm off.

It only came away with a chunk, leaving the rest of it very loosely connected by a few wires.

And then, suddenly, _all_ of its weight was on her and she was practically pinned to the floor.

One of its clawed feet clamped onto her lower leg, and one of its hands clamped onto her already busted arm.

The jaws full of endless rows of teeth hovered above her throat.

She tried to force its face away with her free arm, which was proving quite difficult and she was only _just _keeping it away.

Michael turned to Freddy. He had gotten a good fifteen feet away with the ventriloquist helping him walk. "Can I borrow your flashlight?"

"S-sure!" Freddy pulled the item from his back pocket and handed it over.

While the wolf was preoccupied with gnawing on Elizabeth's throat, Michael chucked the flashlight as hard as he could.

It bounced off of its head and hit the floor with a clatter.

The creature twitched and glitched, looking up in surprise and confusion.

Before it could decide what to do next, Foxy took the opportunity to ram a metal rod into one of those empty blue eyes with as much force as he could muster.

The wolf pulled back a bit, convulsing and glitching.

Riley seized Elizabeth by her good arm and pulled her away.

"Think you can stand?"

There was no response, but Riley tried to get her upright anyway.

Something in the animatronic's leg audibly clicked and her knee buckled.

"I'll take that as a no."

"Id_io_ts. _You_'re _a_ll _i_d_io_ts, _ri_skin_g _y_o_ur li_fe _t_o sa_ve a _ma_chine." Elizabeth's voice was horribly distorted and crackly.

The wolf yanked the rod out from its eye socket.

"We're _not_ leaving anybody behind again," Foxy said. "Not if we can help it."

Riley pulled Elizabeth's good arm across his shoulders and had to practically drag her forward.

The wolf started to get back on its feet.

_"It_ w_o_u_l_d _b_e _sm_art_er _to _le_ave _m_e."

Foxy picked up the fallen flashlight and clocked the wolf in the head once more, causing it to glitch again. "We're not leaving you!"

Charlie prepared Riley's lighter.

_CLINK._

Foxy, Riley, and Elizabeth reached the end of the film trail.

"Into the elevator!" Ballora had been repeatedly smacking the elevator button to keep the doors open.

The wolf was starting to come after them again.

Michael and Freddy went in.

Charlie threw the lighter before she went in. It landed straight on top of the film, which started burning like a cartoon fuse.

The flames came into contact with all of the items Foxy had placed earlier rather quickly, making them rise higher.

Ballora went in.

Fire was already beginning to lick at the wolf's legs as it drew closer.

Riley and Elizabeth went in.

The fumes from the burning celluloid _must _have been toxic.

Foxy made it in.

It was _right _there.

He started rapidly pushing the button to make the elevator doors close faster.

The wolf lunged forward.

The doors shut right in its face, leaving it to smack into them.

The whole elevator shook.

And then, slowly, it started going up.

The only things Foxy could hear were everybody's ragged breathing, and something broken within Elizabeth that kept clicking.


	31. Ashes

It was a bit more difficult getting everybody out of the elevator than it was getting them in. Especially with the injured arms and/or legs almost half of them were sporting.

Foxy was second to last out, receiving a boost up from Riley.

His eyes were immediately assaulted by the early morning sunlight the moment he was back in the shed.

They had been down there _all _night.

It felt like longer, though.

The air outside was unbelievably refreshing.

He really hadn't realized how musty it was down in those rooms.

All of them stood in the backyard for a good six minutes, trying to recollect themselves before heading back into the house.

It was a lot less threatening with light pouring through its windows, uncovering what was hidden beneath shadows during the night.

They passed through the living room first.

And then they went down that long stretch of hallway.

They were only a good five feet away from that fallen front door when they all stopped.

They stopped because the sound of splintering wood abruptly cut through the air.

"Wh-what w-was that?"

The question was answered with a distorted growl.

Elizabeth brought her fist against her forehead. "O_h f_o_r _S_co_tt_'s _s_ake, _I _for_got _ab_out _the _di_rt _pa_ssa_ge _th_at _l_e_a_ds _to _th_e _pa_nt_ry."

"It's okay. We can still take care of this thing. It's gotta be mostly charred now. And weaker," Charlie said quickly.

"Yeah!" Foxy turned to look at the rest of the group. "How do we take care of it?"

"Fir_st t_h_i_n_g_s fi_rs_t, I'_d _st_rong_ly rec_om_m_e_nd _pu_tt_i_ng _di_st_ance _bet_wee_n i_t _a_nd _u_s."_

Everyone continued towards the door, moving a little faster than they had been.

Foxy took three steps forward.

He had apparently chosen a bad place to step because the floor sunk in beneath his foot.

He attempted to pull it out.

He couldn't.

He was stuck.

"Guys, I'm stuck!"

The wolf lumbered out of the kitchen, flames still eating at its body.

Foxy could feel the heat radiating off of it.

He kept trying to pull himself free.

"Crap. Guys!"

Riley turned to Charlie. "Pass me that axe. Fox and I will meet you all outside."

With a small flash of hesitance, Charlie tossed the axe to the redhead before her and the other four went outside.

Riley had lost to that metal monster once before and she wasn't gonna lose to it again.

She was going to conquer something else that haunted her, and she was gonna stop that thing from killing her friend because _nobody _she cared about was gonna die if she could help it.

Especially not him.

She raced back across the hallway to where they both stood.

In one swift movement, she swung upward.

The axe struck the monster in the jaw, knocking its head back before it could sink its teeth into Foxy's skull.

If you had asked Riley what she had said while she hit that thing, she wouldn't be able to tell you. All she knew was that it wasn't anything nice.

And with each word she spoke, she swung the axe into it again. She swung as hard as she possibly could, not really caring which part of it she hit.

The wolf was slower.

It was weaker.

And it wasn't taking her beating very well.

It started to get further and further away from Foxy with each hit it took.

The flames that consumed it were connecting with the ceiling.

Foxy could do nothing but watch in awe as he continued to try and pull his foot free.

All of a sudden, part of the ceiling collapsed.

A load of plaster, wood, metal, and a rotting wardrobe fell onto the wolf, pinning it to the floor.

After pausing for a moment in slight surprise, Riley threw her weapon down and made her way back over to her friend.

"Let's get the hell out of here before this place collapses too, yeah?" She seized Foxy by the underarms and pulled him free.

She made sure that he was in front of her as they rushed out of the burning house.

They both stumbled out the entrance where everybody else was anxiously waiting.

After he stopped coughing, Foxy let himself collapse onto the cracked pathway. "Oh Scott, we made it out. We all made it out."

He turned himself around after spending a few minutes catching his breath, staring up at the large fire that was burning the Afton house to the ground. He watched the thick, black smoke rise up into the sky.

It was all going to burn until nothing remained.

All the evidence of what had just transpired, everything...

The guttural, mechanical screech of that metal monster was still piercing through the air.

Foxy looked back at his friends.

Sure, they were all bloody, bruised, and damaged. But they were there. Freddy, Michael, Ballora, Charlie, Elizabeth, _Riley_.

Miles had presumably vanished.

Foxy let himself fall back on the cold concrete.

It was refreshing, considering how sweaty he was and how sore he felt.

"What do we do now?" he asked after a long while.

"I dunno, call the fire department, stop by a hospital, maybe get some sleep," Charlie offered.

"Honestly, I'm fine with whatever gets us far, _far _away from here," Riley muttered.

"Me too..." Michael agreed.

The group started making their way back to the car.

Foxy continued to lay on the ground.

Riley leaned over him, brushing her hair out of her face. "You need help up?"

"I think so."

He accepted her outstretched hand, and she pulled him to his feet with ease.

"Hey, whenever we finally get home to sleep, do you think you can check under my bed for murderers? Just one last time?"

Riley snorted, "Yeah, sure, Fox."


End file.
